Jordan arrests 3 in dawn raid over church attack

Dawn · 26/10/2026، 11:55:56 AM

Jordanian security forces on Monday arrested three suspects over an attack on a church last week that killed nine people, with the trio wounded in a dawn raid and shootout, authorities said. The kingdom’s Public Security Directorate said the group were apprehended at an abandoned house where they had barricaded themselves inside and opened fire on security forces. One of the suspects was taken to hospital in critical condition, while the other two were stable, Jordan’s state broadcaster Al-Mamlaka reported. There were no casualties among security forces, it added. On Friday, gunmen stormed the compound of the Greek Orthodox St George’s Church in the village of Hammoud in Karak governorate during a funeral procession, authorities said. Karak is home to a significant Christian community in Muslim-majority Jordan, where Christians make up between two and three per cent of the population. “Specialised investigation and raid teams apprehended the three terrorists responsible for the cowardly terrorist attack,” Al-Mamlaka said on X on Monday. The Public Security Directorate said the three suspects had “refused to surrender and opened fire on the security forces”. ‘We will show them’ Jordan’s King Abdullah II said in a post on X that security forces “chased them to the very end”. “We vowed the terrorists would not escape punishment, and no proponent of dark ideologies that divide Jordanians will be tolerated,” he wrote. Earlier, the king visited the injured victims of the church attack in hospital, dressed in military fatigues and carrying a pistol on his hip. “We will show them,” he vowed. Interior Minister Mazen al-Faraya told Al-Mamlaka on Monday that the attackers were all Jordanians and “had been holed up in a building in one of the villages near the site of the attack”. “There is no indication of any external contacts or collaboration with foreign parties,” he said. Government communications minister Mohammad al-Momani said “we stand ready and will strike with an iro