| Missile Attacks Target U.S. Vessel, Israel |
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Friday, August 19, 2005  USS Ashland dock landing ship. AMMAN, Jordan — One of at least three missiles fired from a poor neighborhood of Aqaba, Jordan, narrowly missed a U.S. Navy ship docked at the city's port Friday, but left one Jordanian soldier dead and another wounded. Jordanian officials searched for four suspects who may be tied to an Al Qaeda-linked group that claimed responsibility in an Internet statement. Another of the missiles fell close to an airport just across the border in the Israeli city of Eilat, officials said. A Jordanian security official said a third missile landed near a Jordanian hospital. The U.S. Navy's 5th Fleet (), based in Bahrain, said the USS Kearsage and the USS Ashland, both amphibious assault ships attached to the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit, were docked in Aqaba when a mortar was fired toward them. Jordanian and Israeli officials said the projectiles were not mortar shells but Soviet-designed Katyusha rockets, commonly found in the Middle East. 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 the suspects being hunted in the incident include 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 missile sailed over one of the U.S. ships and slammed into a Jordanian Army 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 U.S. 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 U.S. military also uses the warehouse to store goods bound for Iraq, according to Jordanian authorities. Both the USS Kearsage and the USS Ashland are based in Norfolk, Va. Jordanian and Israeli authorities said militants fired the Katyusha rockets from a warehouse in Aqaba, a Jordanian Red Sea port 210 miles south of the capital, Amman, officials said. "It reminds you almost of the Cole attack," said FOX News contributor Marc Ginsberg, a former U.S. ambassador to Morocco, referring to the October 2000 attack on the USS Cole in Yemen, which killed 17 sailors. "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 () 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. The Navy later 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 would work with Jordanian officials in the investigation and that the attack would 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 came as Israel continues to withdraws its soldiers and settlements from the Gaza Strip, and less than a month after a terrorist attack on Egypt's Sharm el-Sheik () resort, on the other end of the Gulf of Aqaba from Aqaba and Eilat. Aqaba and Eilat are about 10 miles apart on either side of the Jordanian-Israeli border at the northern end of the Gulf of Aqaba, an inlet of the Red Sea. 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 Eilat, but did not explode. The Katyusha rocket, dozens of which have been fired from southern Lebanon into Israel in the past few decades, is based on a World War II Soviet design and is generally not considered 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. |
