Posted on 08/20/2005 5:42:28 AM PDT by minerboy
Attackers fired three rockets from the southern port city of Aqaba this morning, one of which narrowly missed a docked American naval ship and killed a Jordanian soldier, American and Jordanian officials said. It was the first assault on an American military ship in the region since a suicide bombing in Yemen five years ago. Skip to next paragraph Abrahan Farajyan/AP
The amphibious assault ship Kearsage leaving the Jordanian port of Aqaba today after the attack.
A second rocket slammed into a road outside an airport in the neighboring Israeli port of Eilat, injuring a taxi driver, and a third landed near a hospital in Aqaba, Jordanian and Israeli officials said. It was not immediately clear whether anyone was injured at the hospital.
The ships quickly left port, and the state-run news agency Petra said that the Jordanian military and police had sealed off Aqaba and begun an intense manhunt for four men holding Egyptian and Iraqi passports. Investigators believe the men rented the warehouse from which the rockets were fired.
The simultaneous attacks were audacious in their use of military techniques and armament, specifically Katyusha rockets. Insurgent groups in Iraq, Lebanon and the Palestinian territories have used such rockets, but there have been no such attacks in Jordan in recent memory.
The assault immediately evoked the deadly strike on the guided-missile destroyer Cole in October 2000, in which two suicide bombers detonated a launch loaded with explosives next to the ship as it was refueling in a port in Yemen. That attack, which killed 17 sailors and injured 39 others, was attributed to Al Qaeda. American military officials said today that they had increased security measures for ships at port since the Cole attack.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Is this the same one reported yesterday or is this a second attack?
Again?
Same incident.
See related side bar story with over 116 posts
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