5 intelligence agents killed in Jordan terror attack

Five Jordanian intelligence officers have been killed in an attack on a security office outside a Palestinian refugee camp close to Amman, a government official has said.

Jordanian television quoted government spokesman Mohammad al-Momani on Monday as saying the assault on the office near the Al Baqaa refugee camp on the outskirts of the Jordanian capital was a “terrorist attack”.

Momani said the attack targeted the intelligence department’s local office near the camp that houses over 70,000 refugees.

Alongside the three officers, a guard and a telephone exchange operator at the office were killed. The official said that the incident took place just outside the sprawling camp at 7am, but gave no further details.

“This terrorist attack is a clear example of the criminal behaviour of these individuals. Security agencies have launched an investigation and now pursuing the killers,” he said.

The Baqaa camp is located 20 kilometres from the center of Amman and is the largest of the kingdom’s 10 official Palestinian refugee camps.

It hosts around 100,000 of Jordan’s 2 million Palestinian refugees, most of whom fled from the West Bank and Gaza Strip after Israel’s capture of the territory’s during the Six-Day War of 1967.

Jordan is a leading member of the US-led coalition fighting the ISIS group in neighbouring Iraq and Syria and has been the target of extremist attacks in the past.