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Thanks to Texkat for the ping to this thread and post.

Note: The following post is a quote:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1764765/posts

Al-Qaeda-linked suspect killed in Jordan
AFP ^ | January 9, 2006

Posted on 01/09/2007 9:40:32 AM PST by TexKat

IRBID, Jordan (AFP) - Jordanian security forces have killed a suspected Al-Qaeda militant and captured another in a shootout in northern Jordan, state-run television reported and security officials said.

Some security forces were hurt in the operation lasting more than four hours, in which intelligence agents and police took part after a tip-off that Al-Qaeda militants were plotting attacks in Jordan, reports said Tuesday.

"An Al-Qaeda terrorist was killed and another was captured in

Advertisement Irbid", around 90 kilometers (56 miles) north of the Jordanian capital Amman, television said quoting a security official.

The suspect killed was identified as Suleiman al-Anjadi, "holder of a temporary Jordanian passport", television said, implying he was a Palestinian from the Gaza Strip.

The captured suspect was named as Jordanian national Awni al-Mansi.

According to the report, "a group of intelligence forces backed by general security forces (police) were able to kill this morning (Tuesday) a terrorist militant of the Al-Qaeda group and capture another".

The joint force "stormed a house in the Matlaa neighbourhood of Irbid, where they had sought refuge and the suspects opened fire on the security forces when they tried to arrest them", the report added.

The operation was launched after security forces "received a tip-off that Al-Qaeda was plotting attacks in Jordan," television said.

"A number of security forces were slightly wounded" in the operation, it added.

A security official who declined to be identified said the operation began at around 7:30 am and lasted until noon, and that a large number of weapons, ammunitions and explosives were seized, including automatic rifles.

The official said that seven members of the security forces were wounded in the shootout with the militants.

Government officials meanwhile declined to give further details on the operation but expected some information to be forthcoming after the weekly cabinet meeting Tuesday evening.

An AFP photographer who travelled to Irbid said police cordoned off the Matlaa neighbourhood in Irbid and kept journalists at bay.

The ground floor stone house where the suspects had been holed up was damaged, said the photographer, adding that some 20 policemen backed by a civil defence car and a bulldozer were posted outside the house.

Jordan, a key US ally and one of the most stable nations in the Middle East, has been the target of Al-Qaeda attacks over the past few years, including unprecedented hotel bombings in November 2005.

Those attacks targetting three hotels in Amman killed 60 people and were claimed by the Al-Qaeda branch in Iraq of Jordanian Islamist Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi, who was killed in June 2006 in a US air raid in Iraq.

An Iraqi woman, Sajida al-Rishawi, was sentenced to hang in September in connection with the hotel bombings, along with five other Iraqi nationals and a Jordanians sentenced to death in absentia.

In December a Jordanian military tribunal also condemned to death three Syrians and an Iraqi over a rocket attack on an American warship moored off the southern port of Aqaba the previous year.

Zarqawi's group had claimed responsibility for the attack that killed a Jordanian soldier but caused no US casualties.

In December the Al-Qaeda group in Iraq called for the assassination of Jordan's King Abdullah II in a statement posted on the Internet.

"We say to Abdullah ... you will soon experience the same fate as your traitor great-grandfather," the statement said, referring to King Abdullah I, who was assassinated in Jerusalem in 1951.

"We appeal to the lions and to free men in Jordan to ... watch out for him," said the statement.