AMMAN- Three members of the U.S. Military forces working in Jordan have been shot dead this Friday in a firefight that occurred when they tried to enter a base located South of the middle-east country.
According to a senior U.S. Military official, one of the service members died instantly after the shooting, while the other two Americans were wounded and died hours later in a hospital in Amman. Also, one Jordanian officer was injured. These three trainers were in a car and about to enter a training facility in the Prince Faisal airbase in the city of al-Jafr. As stated by the news agency AFP, a defense official from U.S. said that it was a “green on blue” operation, a military term to explain when a friendly force attacks any U.S. Army member.
“But we can’t say for the moment if it was a deliberate” act to kill US personnel or “some kind of misunderstanding,” the unidentified defense official told AFP.
The official declarations from the U.S. government came from the Pentagon Press Secretary, Peter Cook, on Friday´s afternoon.
“We are working closely with the government of Jordan to determine exactly what happened,” he said in the press conference.
Islamic State might be involved
Both of U.S and Jordan governments had worked as close allies to fight the menace that the Islamic State (IS) represents for global security. These countries have been cooperating side to side to combat this terrorist forces mainly located in Syria and Iraq. U.S. forces have trained moderated Syrian rebels in Jordan, as well as Palestinian and Syrian national security forces.
However, this incident is not the first one involving casualties the past year. On November, IS claimed one of the three previous attacks that U.S. has suffered in Jordanian ground. Jordanian police forces had established that the person responsible for this act was “a troubled individual.” Security intelligence assures that this man was an IS supporter.
This shooting came just a day after the IS leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, called all of his supporters around the world to commit attacks globally. Al-Baghdadi gave this information in an odd audio recording released by the terrorist group this past Thursday.
Source: Wall Street Journal