Ghor es-Safi Jordan

THE INTELLIGENCE SERVICES OF Jordan allegedly thwarted a plan by a cell of Islamic State fighters to carry out an armed attack across two countries, with the ultimate aim of killing Jordanian and Israeli troops. The state-owned Jordanian newspaper Al-Ra'I said on Tuesday that the attack was to be carried out in Gawr as-Safi, a sparsely inhabited area of the Jordan Valley, which is adjacent to the southern portion of Israel's Dead Sea region.

The paper said that Jordan's General Intelligence Department caught on to a suspected Islamist militant in December of 2020. The suspect led them to a larger cell of three other militants, who were arrested in February of this year. Their goal was reportedly to attack a Jordanian border post in Gawr as-Safi and kill the border guards there. They then planned to cross into Israel and open fire on Israeli soldiers, with the aim of killing them, in what appears to have been planned as a murder-suicide mission.

In the indictment of the four men, Jordanian authorities claim that they were found to be hoarding a cache of weapons, which they planned to use to carry out their attack in Jordan and Israel. They now face charges of conspiring to commit an act of terrorism and propagating the ideology of the Islamic State, which the Jordanian government designates as an international terrorist organization.

Meanwhile, a new assessment of the Islamic State by the Analytical Support and Sanctions Monitoring Team of the United Nations' Security Council, warns that the militant organization remains strong in parts of the Middle East. The report, issued this week, recognizes that the Islamic State has suffered setbacks in recent years. But it cautions against dismissing the threat, noting that the militant group "has evolved into an entrenched insurgency" that is "exploiting weaknesses in local security to find safe havens and [is] targeting [government] forces" across the region.

► Author: Ian Allen | Date: 28 July 2021 | Permalink