Jordan on maximum alert for al Qaeda attack

DEBKAfile Intelligence

July 27, 2005, 10:40 AM (GMT+02:00)

It was prompted not just by last week’s triple blast at Sharm el-Sheikh but by specific intelligence that a team Abu Musab al-Zarqawi had sent in from Iraq had contacted with local radical Muslim groups for to prepare a joint operation in the kingdom.

Jordan’s army, police, security and emergency services are on standby, and heavy troop reinforcements have been rushed to the capital, Amman, to Petra, the popular tourist site in the south, and to the northern town of Jerash where a summer festival is taking place.