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Three members of US military killed in Jordan army base shooting Three members of US military killed in Jordan army base shooting
(35 minutes later)
Three US military service members have been killed in a shooting outside a training facility in Jordan, a US official has said. Three US service members have been killed outside a military base in southern Jordan, in an exchange of gunfire with Jordanian military guards.
“The service members were in vehicles approaching the gate of a Jordanian military training facility, where they came under small arms fire,” the official told Reuters. “We are working with the Jordanian government to gather additional details about what happened.” The deaths of the men – all military trainers working for the US government – was confirmed by Pentagon officials although details remain unclear.
The Jordanian army earlier said there was an exchange of fire when a car failed to stop at the gate of the airbase in al-Jafr, in the south of the country. A US official in Washington said one service member died at the scene while two, who were critically wounded, died at the King Hussein hospital in Amman, the Jordanian capital, where they were medevaced after the incident.
It said a Jordanian officer was also wounded, and an investigation was under way to determine the causes of the shooting. The shooting, just outside the King Faisal airbase near al-Jafr where the men worked, was initially ascribed by Jordanian authorities to the men’s failure to acknowledge instructions from guards to halt as their vehicles approached the gates of the base.
The deaths could prove very embarrassing for Amman, a key recipient of US financial assistance and a member of the US-led coalition fighting Islamic State in neighbouring Syria and Iraq. According to US officials the shots were fired at the car carrying the Americans as they tried to enter the base near the southern Jordanian town of Mann at about noon on Friday.
US forces have trained a small group of vetted Syrian rebels in Jordan, and American instructors have trained Iraqi and Palestinian security forces in Jordan over the past few years. “A total of three US service members died today in the incident in Jordan,” the official said.
Friday’s incident comes almost a year after a Jordanian policeman shot dead two US instructors, a South African and two Jordanians at a police training centre east of Amman, before himself being gunned down. “The service members were in vehicles approaching the gate of a Jordanian military training facility, where they came under small arms fire,” the official added.
Washington said at the time that the two Americans killed were employees of the private firm DynCorp, contracted by the state department to train Palestinian forces. Two other Americans were wounded in that incident, which sparked concern in Washington and was condemned by the US embassy. The official said they couldn’t say yet whether it was a deliberate act to kill US personnel or “some kind of misunderstanding”. The official added: “We are working with the Jordanian government to gather additional details about what happened.”
The centre where last year’s shooting took place was set up after the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003. It has trained tens of thousands of Iraqi, Palestinian and Afghani police officers, and last year Jordan announced that former Libyan rebels would also be trained there. In addition to the US casualties, a Jordanian officer was also wounded, according to Jordanian officials, although it was not clear if he was in the car or at the gates of the base.
A government source said military training was provided at al-Jafr airbase by instructors of various nationalities, including Americans, to participants from different countries. Earlier a Jordanian statement had said that the “exchange of fire occurred Friday morning at the gate of the Prince Feisal airbase in al-Jafr when a car carrying trainers attempted to enter the gate without heeding the guards’ orders to stop.”
Last year the US announced its intention to increase overall US assistance to Jordan from $660m to $1bn (£800m) annually from 2015-17. Jordan is a key US ally and member of a US-led military coalition fighting the extremist Islamic State group, which controls parts of neighbouring Iraq and Syria.
Jordan has long struggled with homegrown extremism, with hundreds of Jordanians fighting alongside Isis militants in Iraq and Syria and several thousand more supporting the extremist group in the kingdom.
In November 2015 a Jordanian police captain opened fire in an international police training facility, killing two Americans and three others.
The government subsequently portrayed the police captain as troubled. Others, however, suggested that the motivation was related to Isis.
The US has spent millions of dollars to help the kingdom fortify its borders. For the west, any sign of instability in Jordan is of great concern.