The Jordanian military on Monday launched airstrikes in southern Syria, a bombing that Amman framed as retaliation for the October 23 attack on St. George’s Orthodox Church in Jordan’s western Karak province, which killed nine Christians who were attending a funeral.
The strikes hit multiple locations in Syria’s Suwayda and Daraa provinces, and according to the Syrian Observatory of Human Rights, at least five civilians were killed, including women and children. Syria’s state-funded Syrian Arab News Agency also reported that five civilians were killed and said a 65-year-old man was among the dead.
Jordan said that the strikes were launched in coordination with Damascus, but the Syrian government, led by former al-Qaeda commander Ahmed al-Sharaa, issued a statement denying that it was notified of the attack ahead of time.
In its statement on the strikes, the Jordanian military claimed that it targeted “terrorist hideouts” in response to the church shooting. “The operation was conducted in retaliation for the martyrs of last Friday’s Hamoud church attack in Karak. The terrorists behind the Hamoud attack have ties to the targeted terrorist organizations,” the statement said.
The Jordanian statement didn’t specify what “terrorist organizations” were targeted, and Jordanian officials said earlier in the day that three suspects were arrested inside Jordan after a shootout with security forces, and that they had no known link to other terrorist cells. Jordanian officials also said that two of the men who were arrested were brothers, and that the other man was their brother-in-law, and they adhered to an “extremist takfiri ideology.”
The attack on the church in Karak rocked Jordan, as the country is known for protecting its Christian minority, which has until now been spared such violence relative to other Christian communities in the region. Following the massacre, Jordan’s King Abdullah vowed that the perpetrators would be punished “with an iron fist.”
