{Suspect held for attack on security office near Al Baqa’a refugee camp in which five intelligence officers were killed.}<\/p>\n
A suspect has been arrested in the killing of five Jordanian intelligence officers at a security office outside a Palestinian refugee camp close to Amman, a government official told national media.<\/p>\n
Government spokesman Mohammad al-Momani on Monday said the assault on the office near the Al Baqa’a refugee camp on the outskirts of the Jordanian capital was a “terrorist attack”.<\/p>\n
Jordanian media named the suspect as Mahmoud Masharqah, who reportedly has been arrested and interrogated in the past at the same office where he allegedly committed the shooting.<\/p>\n
He was arrested on Monday in al-Sleihi on the outskirts of the town of Ain el-Basha, not far from scene of the crime.<\/p>\n
Prior to his arrest Masharqah was said to have drawn attention to himself when he entered the al-Anwar mosque and acted erratically. He eventually got into a fight with worshippers, who apprehend him. Pictures showed the man was bleeding and badly beaten.<\/p>\n
As well as the three officers, a guard and a telephone exchange operator at the office were killed in the attack. <\/p>\n
Baqa’a camp is the largest Palestinian refugee camp in Jordan, where a large percentage of the country’s seven million-plus population are descendants of refugees who fled in the aftermath of the creation of Israel in 1948.<\/p>\n
Husam Abdallat, a former senior government official, told Al Jazeera that the intelligence office is located on the main street leading up to the camp.<\/p>\n
He added that its proximity to the Palestinian refugee camp might trigger discontent between Jordanians and Jordanians of Palestinian origin.<\/p>\n
“We hope this is not the case, because Jordanians must stay united, especially in times like this,” Abdallat said.<\/p>\n
Fight against ISIL<\/p>\n
Earlier this year a large security operation was mounted in the northern city of Irbid in which several Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS) sympathisers were killed.<\/p>\n
Jordan has been carrying out air strikes against ISIL in both Iraq and Syria.<\/p>\n
One of its pilots was captured by fighters when his plane went down in Syria in December 2014. ISIL later released gruesome footage of him being burned alive.<\/p>\n
Jordan has also opened up the Prince Hassan airbase, northeast of the capital, to other members of the United States-led coalition taking part in the war against ISIL.<\/p>\n
In March, Jordanian authorities announced that they had foiled an ISIL plot to carry out attacks in the kingdom in an operation that led to the deaths of seven fighters.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
{Suspect held for attack on security office near Al Baqa’a refugee camp in which five intelligence officers were killed.} A suspect has been arrested in the killing of five Jordanian intelligence officers at a security office outside a Palestinian refugee camp close to Amman, a government official told national media. Government spokesman Mohammad al-Momani on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[101],"byline":[2474],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-25898","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-internationl","byline-al-jazeera"],"bylines":[{"id":2474,"name":"AL JAZEERA","slug":"al-jazeera","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":null}],"contributors":[{"id":2474,"name":"AL JAZEERA","slug":"al-jazeera","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":null}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25898","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25898"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25898\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25898"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25898"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25898"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=25898"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=25898"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}