King Abdullah II says Jordan will “respond with an iron fist” after a suicide attacker ploughed a auto bomb through the border from Syria, killing six security forces.
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It said it destroyed several enemy vehicles at the border but would give no further details until later in the day.
“We strongly condemn the latest terrorist attack on Jordanian soil”, the Foreign Ministry said.
The camps are located between two berms, or earthen barriers, that run parallel to the border, which is not clearly marked in the area.
It was one of the most serious attacks on Jordanian troops in recent history.
Jordan’s backing of USA -supported opposition groups in Syria’s civil war is threatening to undermine the country’s security, said Hisham Jaber, a retired Lebanese general and military analyst. He vowed, “This evil will be defeated”.
Jordan is a member of the US-led coalition fighting the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. No group has announced responsibility for the incident.
The terrorist, who killed six Jordanian soldiers, came from inside Jordan, not across the border from Syria, meaning that ISIS had succeeded in setting up a terror network or networks inside the kingdom. Ruqban is just a few miles from the point where Syria, Jordan and Iraq meet.
It was not immediately clear if Tuesday’s attack would disrupt daily deliveries of food, water and other essentials by worldwide aid agencies to the refugees.
Jordan, a key USA ally in the region, has foiled many border infiltration attempts and terror plots in recent years, including a thwarted ISIS plot in March that officials said was aimed at military and civilian installations.
On Wednesday King Abdullah urged the coalition to intensify the battle against IS and “eliminate this terrorist group” during talks in Amman with USA special envoy Brett McGurk. Fourteen soldiers were also wounded in the attack near a makeshift camp that hosts thousands of Syrian refugees.
It is not yet clear who carried out the assault, but the Daesh group has threatened in the past to “break down” Jordan’s borders.
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Jordan has also widened a crackdown on ISIL sympathisers at home, jailing hundreds in the past two years for promoting the group’s ideas on social media. It says Islamic State militants may have infiltrated their ranks as majority come from Islamic State-held areas in central and eastern Syria, and has allowed only a trickle of refugees, mostly women and children, in recent months.
