Attack on church in Jordan: Three days of mourning – king vows harshest penalties
At least seven people were killed and 34 wounded in the attack on a funeral in Karak. The attackers are being hunted; U.N. chief Guterres condemned the attack.
Archive image · Photo: Tarawneh / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0 (cropped and resized)
After the attack on a Greek Orthodox church in southern Jordan, Prime Minister Jaafar Hassan declared three days of national mourning from Oct. 23, Gulf News reported. At least seven people were killed and 34 wounded in the attack in the village of Hamoud in Karak governorate, about 120 kilometers south of Amman, according to authorities. Witnesses told Al Jazeera an explosion was heard as a funeral procession began, after which masked attackers stormed the church and fired for several minutes. State television reported that two suspects got out of a vehicle and opened fire.
Interior Minister Mazen al-Faraya called the attack “terrorist” and “unprecedented” but did not name any group. Initially no one claimed responsibility, and security forces were hunting the attackers. King Abdullah II vowed that those responsible would face the harshest penalties. U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres strongly condemned the attack; his spokesman said an attack during a funeral procession was particularly heinous. Christians make up about 300,000 of Jordan's roughly 11.5 million people, and such attacks are extremely rare in the country. In Karak in 2016, Islamic State attackers killed 10 people at a Crusader-era castle.