A Jordanian policeman shot dead two U.S. instructors, a South African, and two fellow Jordanians at a police training centre yesterday before being gunned down, a government spokesman said.
Advertisement
Monday’s shooting also killed a South African contractor and two Jordanians who worked as translators for the foreign instructors at the facility.
US President Barack Obama said he was treating the attack at the King Abdullah Training Centre – in which four Jordanians and one Lebanese citizen were wounded – very seriously and a full investigation was under way.
The Jordanian embassy in Washington also said that five others, including three Jordanians and two Americans, were wounded in the attack. He was married and had two children.
A USA official said the shooter took his own life after the shootings though the Jordanian Information Bureau said the man had been “killed at the scene by Jordanian police forces”.
Kirby said the two that were killed “were what we call monitors; they were contractors contracted through the State Department as trainer monitors for this curriculum”. The attacker was shot dead by Jordanian security forces.
Notably, Monday’s shooting occurred exactly 10 years to the day after a series of coordinated bomb attacks struck three luxury hotels in Amman, killing dozens.
“The training center is now internationally accredited and trains regional and global law enforcement personnel from Bahrain, Egypt, Iraq, Kuwait, Lebanon, Pakistan, and Tunisia, and plans to train more participants from other countries in the future”, the State Department said in a 2011 report.
That same person said that the entire town of Rimoun is in “complete shock”. But when asked what might have prompted the event, Kirby said it’s unclear and that a Jordan-led investigation is just beginning.
It was not clear if there was a political motive to the shooting spree, which also wounded six people, including two Americans.
In February, Islamic State militants wearing Iraqi military uniforms tried to storm an air base used by US military advisers to train Iraqi security forces. It’s run by the Jordanian Public Security Directorate. “We have received reports about a security incident at the Jordan worldwide Police Training Centre”. Jordan’s King Abdullah II visited those injured in the deadly incident at the King Hussein medical center in west Amman.
Advertisement
It hosts joint military exercises with countries like the USA and United Kingdom, and strongly supports the US-led coalition against Islamic State militants in Syria.
