Jordan hunts for suspects in US attack
(AP)
Updated: 2005-08-20 09:35

The vessels, which are based in Norfolk, Va., carried elements of the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit from Camp Lejeune, N.C. It was unknown how many Marines and sailors were on board, but the Ashland can carry up to 400 sailors and 500 Marines and the Kearsarge 1,100 crew and 1,900 Marines. The Kearsarge, command ship for an expeditonary strike group, can also carry assault hovercraft and Harrier jets.

Cmdr. Jeff Breslau, another 5th Fleet spokesman, said he knew of no specific warnings of imminent attack, but he said U.S. warships in the Middle East always operate under increased security.

He said the Navy assumed the rocket was fired at the U.S. ships and missed, but authorities had not confirmed that. Several civilian cargo ships were docked nearby.

The Bush administration said it believed the two ships were targeted and condemned the attack.

"We are investigating the matter and will cooperate with local Jordanian officials on the attacks," said White House spokeswoman Dana Perino, who was with the vacationing President Bush in Crawford, Texas.

It was the most serious attack involving a Navy vessel since October 2000, when al-Qaida-linked militants rammed a boat loaded with explosives into the destroyer Cole off Yemen, killing 17 sailors and severely damaging the vessel.

Also in the region, a small Navy craft intercepted a dhow approaching an Iraqi oil platform in the Persian Gulf last year and the dhow exploded, killing two sailors and a Coast Guardsman.

All three rockets fired on Friday — the one at the port and the two at Israel — appeared to have been fired from a building in a warehouse district in the hills on Aqaba's northern edge, about 5 miles from the port, said a Jordanian intelligence official who showed journalists the site.

Two Katyusha rockets — highly inaccurate unguided weapons used by Lebanon's Hezbollah guerrillas to attack northern Israel — were fired to the west toward Israel. One sailed across the border, hitting a road about 15 yards from the perimeter fence at the airport for the resort of Eilat, about nine miles from Aqaba.

"I heard a noise, the car shook, and I kept driving for two more meters (yards)," said Israeli cab driver Meir Farhan, 40, who suffered minor wounds. "I didn't realize what it was. When I went out of the car I saw a hole in the ground on the asphalt."

The third rocket hit the backyard wall of Jordan's Princess Haya Military Hospital, which lies between the suspected firing site and the Israeli border.

The two-story building from which the rockets were apparently launched has garages on the ground floor. On the second floor is a 3-by-3-foot window from which the attackers are thought to have fired the rockets, said the intelligence official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of intelligence agency rules.

The building was rented this week by four people holding Egyptian and Iraqi nationalities, Jordan's state-run Petra news agency reported, citing preliminary investigations.

Authorities scoured Aqaba and its vicinity for up to six suspects, including possibly Syrians, who were believed to have escaped in a vehicle with Kuwaiti license plates, a security official in Amman, the capital, told AP. He agreed to discuss the hunt on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the press.