AQABA, Jordan, Aug 2, (Agencies): Rockets from Egypt’s Sinai, an area where Islamist militants have operated in the past, struck Israel’s and Jordan’s Red Sea port resorts on Monday, killing a Jordanian civilian and injuring six others, Jordanian and Israeli police said.
A Jordanian interior ministry source said one of the four injured when one rocket exploded near a five star hotel in Aqaba, died from his injuries.
There was no word of casualties in the adjacent Israeli port and holiday resort of Eilat, police said.
Asked where the Aqaba rocket was fired, the Jordanian source said without elaborating: “It came from the west.” Experts were investigating the site to find out where the short-range rocket had been launched, he said.
Egyptian security sources were quoted by the state news agency as saying rockets could not have been fired from Sinai.
Jordanian resident Ibrahim Salymehin said he heard one loud blast and when he arrived at the scene in Aqaba he saw at least three injured men taken to a nearby hospital by ambulance.
A crowd gathered near the scene of the explosion several hundred metres away from a five star hotel close to the beach.
“We saw the wreckage of a taxi which was burnt and fragmented metal scattered around the area that was cordoned off by police,” Aqaba resident Abdullah Yashin Rawashdehd told Reuters.
Eilat District Police Commander Moshe Cohen told Israel Radio that his forces were still trying to confirm that five explosions heard in the morning had been caused by shelling.
Two of the suspected rockets or mortar bombs appeared to have landed in the sea, while another hit Aqaba, he said. “It’s a little early to say, but it is reasonable to assume that it came from the southern area,” he said, referring to neighbouring Egypt, whose Sinai desert has seen occasional violence attributed to Islamist militants.
No group claimed responsibility for the attack. At least one rocket struck Aqaba on April 22, causing no casualties. Amman said the rocket had been fired from outside Jordan and Israeli media said Sinai was a possible launch point.
In 2005, rockets were fired at US warships in Aqaba but missed their target and killed a Jordanian soldier on land. A group claiming links to al-Qaeda said it was behind the attack.
Two years later, a Palestinian suicide bomber infiltrated through Sinai and killed three people at an Eilat bakery.
Jordan and Egypt are the only Arab states to have full peace accords with Israel. Those ties were frayed by Israel’s crackdown in 2000 on a Palestinian uprising in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
Jordanian and injuring five but causing no casualties in Israel.
Israeli police said at least five blasts were heard in and around Eilat at 7:45 am (0445 GMT), with one rocket exploding in fields outside the city, two crashing into the sea, and the rest landing across the border in Jordan. Jordanian officials said that at about the same time, a Grad-type rocket slammed into Aqaba, less than 10 kilometres (six miles) from Eilat, injuring six people, one of whom later died from his injuries.
“Subhi Yousef al-Alawneh died in Aqaba as a result of wounds he sustained from the rocket attack,” a security official told AFP, saying the 51-year-old taxi driver had died in Aqaba’s Princess Haya hospital.
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GAZA CITY: Thirty-three Palestinians were injured early Monday by a mystery explosion in Deir al Balah refugee camp south of Gaza City, Palestinian medics reported.
The blast occurred in a house where an activist of the armed wing of Hamas lives, seriously injuring a woman. The other residents were only slightly injured.
Security services of Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip, said the house had been hit by an Israeli bombardment but an Israeli military spokesman formally denied this, saying the army had not launched any operations.
Israeli warplanes had launched two pre-dawn raids on tunnels in the southern Gaza Strip on Sunday after a Palestinian rocket struck the southern town of Sderot, damaging a university building without causing casualties.