Jordan strikes southern Syria after arrests over deadly church attack

Jordan says it carried out air strikes against suspected militant hideouts in southern Syria after its security forces arrested three men accused of involvement in last week’s deadly attack at the Hammoud Church. The strikes mark a sharp escalation in the aftermath of an assault that killed nine people and injured 40 others. Jordan’s armed forces said the targets were in southeastern Syria and that the operation was conducted in coordination with Damascus.

Al Jazeera also reported that Jordan’s air force carried out several strikes in southern Syria in response to Friday’s church attack. Jordan said its investigation had determined that suspects linked to the assault were hiding across the border. Syria, however, gave a different account of the operation.

According to DW, Syrian authorities said they had opened an investigation into the Jordanian attacks rather than confirming Amman’s description of the strikes as coordinated. A Syrian health official told the country’s state news agency that at least five civilians, including women and children, were killed. The cross-border strikes followed a dawn operation in Jordan’s Karak governorate, about 120 kilometres southwest of Amman.

Security forces said they found three armed men hiding in an abandoned house and exchanged fire with them. All three suspects were wounded and detained, while Jordanian authorities reported no casualties among their personnel. Interior Minister Mazen Al-Faraya said the suspects had been identified soon after the attack.

In remarks to state broadcaster Al-Mamlaka, he said the men had resisted fiercely but were eventually subdued and taken into custody with severe injuries. He said the security services had used all available means to capture those responsible. Jordan has not publicly named the suspects or identified their alleged affiliations.

There has also been no claim of responsibility for the church attack. Officials have described the perpetrators as linked to “terrorist groups” hiding in Syria, but the supplied reports do not establish which organisation, if any, was involved. King Abdullah II had ordered authorities to respond with an “iron fist” against those seeking to undermine national unity.

After the arrests, he said terrorists would not escape punishment and that ideologies dividing Jordanians would not be tolerated. Relatives of victims told Al-Mamlaka that the detentions brought some relief despite the scale of the tragedy. Attacks on Christian minorities are described by DW as very rare in Jordan, a relatively stable state that is allied with the United States and maintains diplomatic and military relations with Israel.

The immediate dispute over the Syrian strikes, together with the reported civilian deaths, leaves the account of the operation contested while Jordan’s investigation continues.