IS claims responsibility for Jordan border attack last week

The Islamic State militant group (ISIS) claimed responsibility Monday for the suicide bomb attack on a Jordanian military post last week that left seven members of the country’s security services dead.

The vehicle exploded near a camp for Syrian refugees located in a desolate area where the borders of Jordan, Syria, and Iraq meet. An orange ball of fire rises in the air, followed by a cloud of thick black smoke and the sound of an explosion.

Islamic State’s Aamaq news agency said that an Islamic State fighter carried out the attack on what it described as the “American-Jordanian” base at al-Rukban.

Syrian refugees and worldwide aid officials say little water and no food has reached 64,000 Syrian refugees stranded in the desert since Jordan sealed its border last week in response to a suicide attack.

Worldwide relief workers said convoys of food were stopped for the sixth straight day and only water trucks were being allowed through to the camp.

Jordanian government spokesperson Mohammed Momani tells AP, “It’s an worldwide and a United Nations problem, and not a Jordanian one…Jordan is willing to help, but the berm [an earthen barrier] is closed”.

“Jordanians need to know they are being targeted by these dark criminals, and the means used by this terrorist organization show its criminality and brutality”.

“The fate of this gang will be either Jordanian prisons or getting killed”, he said.

“Their desperate attempts [to target Jordanians] will only make Jordanians more determined to eliminate the group”, he concluded.

Jordanian analyst Saad Hattar said the two attacks laid bare Jordan’s vulnerability.

Conditions for those refugees are now “tragic” due to shortages of food and water, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which monitors the conflict via a network of informants inside Syria, said.

This story has been corrected to show that the name of the website is “Hala Akhbar”, not “Hala Akbar”.