Al-Qaeda says it attacked US ships

Published on 24/08/2005 01:06

AL-QAEDA in Iraq has claimed responsibility for the weekend rocket attack that narrowly missed United States warships in the Jordanian Red Sea port city of Aqaba.

Jordan said it had arrested a Syrian, one of four men allegedly involved in the attack. The other three, the captured man's two sons and an Iraqi man, were believed to have escaped to Iraq.

The Jordanian announcement said the four were part of an Iraqi-based terrorist organisation, which the government did not identify. However, Al-Qaeda in Iraq, led by the Jordanian terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, was the second group to claim responsibility for the rocket attack, in a statement signed by its spokesman, Abu Maysara al-Iraqi.

The first claim was issued by the Abdullah Azzam Brigades shortly after the Katyusha rockets were fired from a hilltop warehouse, overlooking Aqaba and its port.

The al-Zarqawi group explained the delay in issuing its claim by saying it waited five days "so that the brothers could finish retreating".

The Syrian arrested in the attack was identified as Mohammed Hassan Abdullah al-Sihly, who lived in the Jordanian capital, Amman. He was said to have been helped by his two sons, who come from the northern Syrian city of Hama.

The fourth member of the team and its reputed leader was allegedly Mohammed Hamid Hussein, an Iraqi.

In the attack last Friday, one rocket flew across the bow of a US amphibious assault ship and crashed into a warehouse, killing a Jordanian soldier. Another missile landed near a Jordanian hospital, and a third hit a taxi on the outskirts of an Israeli airport across the border, but it did not explode.