Missile Attacks Target U.S. Vessel, IsraelFriday, August 19, 2005
AMMAN, Jordan — One of three missiles fired from Jordan (search) narrowly missed a U.S. Navy ship docked at port on Friday but the attack left one Jordanian soldier dead and another wounded.
Another missile fell close to an airport in neighboring Israel, officials said. A Jordanian security official said another missile landed near a Jordanian hospital.
The U.S. Navy’s 5th Fleet (search), based in Bahrain, said two American amphibious ships were docked in Aqaba when a mortar was fired toward them. The vessels later sailed out of port as a result of the attacks, U.S. Navy spokesman Lt. Cdr. Charlie Brown told The Associated Press in Bahrain.
FOX News has learned that a number of people are being hunted in the incident, including two Iraqis, one Syrian and possibly some Egyptians. The city of Aqaba has also been closed off.
A group linked to Al Qaeda claimed responsibility in an Internet statement. The statement purportedly from the Abdullah Azzam Brigades could not immediately be verified.
Jordanian soldier Ahmed Jamal Saleh was fatally wounded when the mortar sailed over one of the U.S. ships and slammed into a warehouse, a Jordanian security official said on condition of anonymity.
The soldier died in the ambulance taking him to hospital; another Jordanian was also wounded, the official added. No sailors or Marines were injured in the attack, Brown said.
“At approximately 8:44 a.m. local time, a suspected mortar rocket flew over the USS Ashland’s bow and impacted in a warehouse on the pier in the vicinity of the Ashland and USS Kearsage,” Brown said. “The warehouse sustained an approximate 8-foot hole in the roof of the building.”
The attacks were believed to have been launched from a poor neighborhood on the outskirts of Aqaba, a Jordanian Red Sea port 210 miles south of the capital, Amman, officials said.
“It reminds you almost of the Cole attack,” said Mark Ginsberg, a former U.S. ambassador, referring to the October 2000 attack on the U.S. Navy ship, the USS Cole.
“From press reports, it appears it was Syrians and two Iraqis with a Kuwaiti license plate that had these rockets,” Ginsberg told FOX News. “Where do you get these rockets in the Middle East? From Hezbollah (search) or Iran. The Iranians are the biggest supplier of these rockets to Hezbollah.”
U.S. Navy vessels have been on Al Qaeda’s target list since 2000, when operatives rammed a boat loaded with explosives into the destroyer USS Cole while it was in port in Yemen, killing 17 sailors. The Navy then implemented measures aimed at increasing the physical security of ships in port.
“We generally consider this entire region a higher state of a threat level than other places. There’s always a concern for any of our interests here,” Navy Cmdr. Jeff Breslau, spokesman for the 5th Fleet, told FOX News Friday morning.
Breslau said the U.S. military will work with Jordanian officials in the investigation and that the attack will not affect the relationship between the two countries.
“We work very closely with the Jordanians and we’ll continue to work very closely with the Jordanians whenever we’re in the region,” he said.
The attacks come amid a time of tension in the region marked by Israel’s withdrawal from the Palestinian Gaza and several terrorist attacks on Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula during the past year, including the July 23 attack in Sharm el-Sheik (search).
Aqaba and Eilat are about 10 miles apart and located on either side the Jordan-Israeli border at the northern end of the Red Sea close to Sinai Peninsula (search).
One U.S. counterterrorism official told FOX News that there is “always a general caution in that area, but nothing to suggest an attack of this nature was in the pipeline.”
The official said it’s not clear if there is a link between Friday’s attack and Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza, “but that is an angle they would certainly pursue.”
Israeli police and witnesses said a Katyusha rocket fired from Jordan slammed into a taxi traveling near the airport in Israel’s nearby Red Sea resort of Eilat, but did not explode. It’s not clear what kind of Katyusha rocket was fired, but that rocket is generally not considered to be a sophisticated weapon.
“I heard a noise, the car shook, and I kept driving for two more meters (yards),” said Israeli cab driver Meir Farhan, 40, who suffered mild wounds. “I didn’t realize what it was. When I went out of the car I saw a hole in the ground on the asphalt.”
The rocket left a small crater in the road about 15 yards from the Eilat airport fence, said local police commander Avi Azulin.
Israeli Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz, speaking in southern Israel, said the attacks were “intended to hit the Israeli side and the Jordanian side as well.”
Jordan, which is home to 1.8 million Palestinian refugees and their descendants, and Israel signed a 1994 peace deal.
FOX News’ Catherine Herridge and The Associated Press contributed to this report.