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Americans Among The Dead In Attack At Police Training Center In Jordan

At least four other people, including two more Americans, sustained injuries in the Monday attack at the King Abdullah II bin al-Hussein Training City east of Amman, security sources said, adding that the killed Jordanians were a translator and a police officer.

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Momani portrayed the shooting as a crime and said an investigation has been launched.

In the USA, President Obama said that the attacker wore a military uniform. It was “premature to speculate on motive at this point” with the investigation proceeding, it said.

Jordan is a key Western ally and part of the U.S.-led coalition against ISIS.

Jordan hosts several hundred USA contractors who are part of a military programme to bolster the kingdom’s defences, including the stationing of F-16 fighter jets that use Jordanian airfields to hit Islamic State positions in neighbouring Syria.

Such cooperation has deepened in recent years, with the upheavals of the Arab Spring uprisings and the rise of Islamic militancy in the region, said Dwairi, a former commander of Jordan’s Engineering Corps.

The shooting spree took place on the 10th anniversary of al Qaeda suicide bombings that targeted three Amman luxury hotels and killed 57 people, the deadliest militant attack in Jordanian history.

Abu Zaid’s brother, Fadi, told The Associated Press that Anwar was mentally stable and “not an extremist at all”.

U.S. State Department spokesman John Kirby said the two slain Americans worked for DynCorp global, a major military contractor, in a program funded by the State Department’s Bureau of Diplomatic Security and Bureau of worldwide Narcotics and Law Enforcement.

Such attacks have been extremely rare in the Middle East. The official said all were civilians, but declined to identify them. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly on the matter. Jordan’s minister of information, Mohammed Momani, said a South African and a Jordanian civil employee were among the dead.

About two hours after the shooting, dozens of armored vehicles were moving in and out of the large, walled training center on the outskirts of Amman.

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The Jordan global Police Training Center was established in October 2003 through an agreement between Jordan and the then-provisional government of Iraq, according to a U.S. State Department document.

4 killed including 2 Americans in Jordan police shooting