A Qaeda attacks Jordanian port city; 1 killed, 3 hurt

A Grad rocket exploded early Monday in the Jordanian seaside resort of Aqaba, killing one person and injuring at least three, Israeli security officials said. Officials said the rocket, one of five fired, likely was aimed at the Israeli resort of Eilat, the New York Times reported.

Two of the rockets landed in the Red Sea, two in Jordan, and a fifth was believed to have exploded in a field near Eliat, said Moshe Cohen, Israel police commander in Eilat.

Jordan’s Petra news agency said the victims, all reported to be Jordanian citizens, were caught in the explosion of a rocket outside the Intercontinental Hotel in Aqaba.

UPI reports that Israeli security officials initially said the rockets were fired by terror groups that operate in the Sinai Peninsula. Iran has been using Somali pirates to deliver weapons and explosives from Iranian ships to the Sinai Peninsula. These munitions are then being picked up by a network of Egyptian Bedouins, who are paid by Iran deliver the weapons to Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

Last year, Egyptian security forces captured several Hezbollah operatives in the Sinai, where they were planning operations to destabilize the Egyptian regime as the Mubarak era comes to an end and struggle over succession begins.

In April 2010, al Qaeda operatives fired two Grad rockets from the Egyptian-controlled Sinai peninsula at Eilat. The rocket miss Eilat — one hit the neighboring Jordanian port city of Aqaba, the second fell into the sea (“Al Qaeda rockets aimed at Israel hit Jordanian port city,” 23 April 2010 HSNW). In 2005 al Qaeda terrorists used the same area of the Sinai to fire Katyusha rockets at a U.S. warship docked in the port of Aqaba (see below).

Debka reports that further examination of the rocket attack by Israeli and Jordanian security forces has now led the two countries to conclude that the rockets were fired by al Qaeda sympathizers from inside Jordan itself. Last week, Jordanian intelligence had picked up “chatter” among terrorist cells in the kingdom about an unspecified impending attack on Aqaba, and on Friday Jordanian military forces surrounded the city and placed check-points at key intersections. Jordanian helicopters were also seen hovering over the mountainous terrain north of the city.

Al Qaeda operatives launched a similar rocket attack on Aqaba on 8 July 2007, in which a Jordanian soldier was killed. One of the targets of the 2007 attack was the USS Ashland, which was docking at the Aqaba port at the time. The Ashland was not hit, but it was the second time it was attacked by al Qaeda rocket while in Aqaba (the earlier attack took place on 19 August 2005).

In 2001 Jordan’s security forces captured Hezbollah activists from Lebanon who planned to fire missiles at Eilat from Aqaba. A year later, an unknown Beirut-based organization said it was planning to bomb several areas in Israel from Jordan, including Eilat, Beit She’an, and Tiberias.

The Grad, known as the BM-21 Grad, is a truck-mounted 122-mm multiple rocket launcher developed in the early 1960s in the Soviet Union. Military experts say its maximum range is 40 kilometers (25 miles).