Israel working to bring home from embassy guard from Jordan, Netanyahu says

But reports on Jordanian media suggest that it wasn’t the Jordanian workman who attacked the guard, but that he himself was shot by the guard during an argument between the two.

Jordan has said it is looking to question an Israeli security guard who killed two Jordanians at the Amman embassy compound, as Israel points to his diplomatic immunity.

Jordanian police said after yesterday’s shooting that they sealed off the embassy compound and deployed dozens of anti-terrorism police forces.

The government source said an initial investigation indicated that Jawawdeh and the security guard “fell out over some dispute which led to a stabbing and a shooting”.

Two Jordanians later died, according to the agency and the news site Hala Akhbar, linked to the Jordanian military.

One of the workers and the building’s landlord were killed and the security guard was injured, it added.

Jordanian officials have called on Israel to remove metal detectors outside the Al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem.

Jordan, which occupied eastern Jerusalem from 1949 to 1967, is the custodian of the Islamic waqf, which administers the Al-Aqsa Mosque on the Temple Mount site.

The Israeli embassy in the affluent Rabae district of Amman is protected by Jordanian gendarmes. The Israeli security guard only sustained light injuries in Sunday’s incident.

The plot was foiled when Jordanian security forces captured the two Mossad agents.

The incident is bound to further inflame Jordanian public opinion against Israel and complicate efforts to defuse tensions over a contested Jerusalem shrine.

In response, the Israeli shot dead both the attacker and the Jordanian apartment owner, Haaretz reported.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs stated that it is working together with the security authorities and with the Jordanian government to resolve the crisis.

The incident on Sunday night came with tensions high over new Israeli security measures at a highly sensitive holy site in Jerusalem, but it was not clear if there was any link.

King Abdullah II has frequently protested Israeli measures, including restrictions on the access of Muslim worshippers and police raids of the compound to disperse Palestinian stone-throwers.

Oren Hazan, a member of Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, tweeted: “our neighbors from east to the Jordan [river] need some re-education”. Israel also released Hamas’s founder and spiritual leader, Ahmed Yassin, from jail as part of the swap.