Jordanian Prime Minister Marouf al-Bakhit has told Muslim opposition lawmakers that weapons seized from a Hamas cache in the kingdom were smuggled from Syria, two parliament deputies said on Thursday.
The prime minister's office declined to comment on the matter, but Jordan's official Petra news agency quoted al-Bakhit as telling the lawmakers that the arms were smuggled from "a neighboring Arab country," but did not name Syria.
Petra said al-Bakhit told the lawmakers in the Wednesday meeting that the cache impounded earlier this week "wasn't the first time that Hamas smuggled weapons to Jordan, but there had been several previous attempts that were busted."
According to Azzam Hneidi, a deputy who heads the 17-strong opposition Islamic Action Front bloc in parliament, al-Bakhit did not say how activists from the militant Palestinian group managed to sneak in the weapons and explosives from Syria, where the Hamas political leaders are based.
Hneidi said that al-Bakhit made his comments on Wednesday in a meeting with him and nine other members of the Islamic Action Front, the political arm of the Muslim Brotherhood Movement.
Tayseer al-Fityani, another deputy representing the Islamic Action Front in parliament, confirmed. He quoted al-Bakhit as saying that "a number of people" linked to Hamas were detained. But he said that the prime minister declined to identify them or say how many they were.
Government officials declined comment, apparently to avoid tensions with Jordan's northern neighbor, which the US accuses of sponsoring terrorism because of its support for anti-Israeli militant Palestinian factions, including Hamas, and the Lebanese Hezbollah group.
The US, which has imposed economic sanctions on Damascus, also accuses Syria of allowing militants to cross into Iraq to fight the US-led multinational force there. Syria has denied the charges.
Amman has accused Syria before of not stopping Islamic militants from smuggling arms to Jordan, a moderate Arab nation with close ties to the US and a peace treaty with Israel, signed in 1994.
Last year, Jordan said an al-Qaeda plot to attack intelligence headquarters in Amman had been hatched in Syria and another neighboring state. Under the plan, members of the group purportedly entered the kingdom from Syria. Damascus denied the accusations.
Earlier this week, Jordan said Hamas activists were threatening the country's national security by smuggling weapons and stashing them in the kingdom. Hamas denied the allegation.
Officials did not say whether arrests had been made, but confirmed that the government called off the visit by Palestinian Foreign Minister Mahmoud Zahar, a Hamas member, because of the discovery.
Far from the violence ravaging Haiti, a market on the border with the Dominican Republic has maintained a welcome degree of normal everyday life. At the Dajabon border gate, a wave of Haitians press forward, eager to shop at the twice-weekly market about 200km from Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince. They are drawn by the market’s offerings — food, clothing, toys and even used appliances — items not always readily available in Haiti. However, with gang violence bad and growing ever worse in Haiti, the Dominican government has reinforced the usual military presence at the border and placed soldiers on alert. While the market continues to
An image of a dancer balancing on the words “China Before Communism” looms over Parisian commuters catching the morning metro, signaling the annual return of Shen Yun, a controversial spectacle of traditional Chinese dance mixed with vehement criticism of Beijing and conservative rhetoric. The Shen Yun Performing Arts company has slipped the beliefs of a spiritual movement called Falun Gong in between its technicolored visuals and leaping dancers since 2006, with advertising for the show so ubiquitous that it has become an Internet meme. Founded in 1992, Falun Gong claims nearly 100 million followers and has been subject to “persistent persecution” in
ONLINE VITRIOL: While Mo Yan faces a lawsuit, bottled water company Nongfu Spring and Tsinghua University are being attacked amid a rise in nationalist fervor At first glance, a Nobel prize winning author, a bottle of green tea and Beijing’s Tsinghua University have little in common, but in recent weeks they have been dubbed by China’s nationalist netizens as the “three new evils” in the fight to defend the country’s valor in cyberspace. Last month, a patriotic blogger called Wu Wanzheng filed a lawsuit against China’s only Nobel prize-winning author, Mo Yan (莫言), accusing him of discrediting the Communist army and glorifying Japanese soldiers in his fictional works set during the Japanese invasion of China. Wu, who posts online under the pseudonym “Truth-Telling Mao Xinghuo,” is seeking
‘SURPRISES’: The militants claim to have successfully tested a missile capable of reaching Mach 8 and vowed to strike ships heading toward the Cape of Good Hope Yemen’s Houthi rebels claim to have a new, hypersonic missile in their arsenal, Russia’s state media reported on Thursday, potentially raising the stakes in their attacks on shipping in the Red Sea and surrounding waterways against the backdrop of Israel’s war with Hamas in the Gaza Strip. The report by the state-run RIA Novosti news agency cited an unidentified official, but provided no evidence for the claim. It comes as Moscow maintains an aggressively counter-Western foreign policy amid its grinding war on Ukraine. However, the Houthis have for weeks hinted about “surprises” they plan for the battles at sea to counter the