Rockets from Egypt's Sinai, where Islamist militants have operated in the past, hit Israel's and Jordan's Red Sea port resorts on Monday, killing a Jordanian civilian and injuring three others, Jordanian and Israeli police said. A Jordanian interior ministry source said one of the four injured when a rocket exploded near a five-star hotel in Aqaba, later died from his injuries.
There was no word of casualties in the adjacent Israeli port and holiday resort of Eilat, police said. Aqaba and Eilat lie on the narrow northern end of the Gulf of Aqaba, an extension of the Red Sea, with Sinai stretching west and south of Eilat.
Jordanian Minister of State Ali al-Ayed said the kingdom would continue its "fight against terrorists who undertake callous attacks that targets innocent people". Israeli President Shimon Peres condemned the rocket fire and said Israel and Jordan, who made peace in 1994, were "partners in the uncompromising struggle to eradicate terrorism".
"There is a real struggle in the Middle East between the peace camp of moderate countries and the camp of extremists, who want to sabotage any chance for peace," Peres said. Asked where the Aqaba rocket was fired from, the Jordanian source said without elaborating: "It came from the west." Experts were investigating the site to find out where the short-range rocket had been launched, he said.
Egyptian security sources were quoted by the state news agency as saying rockets could not have been fired from Sinai since the largely empty, desert region was very mountainous. "The only missiles that can be fired from Sinai are mortars which can pass over these heights," General Abdel Fadeel Shousha, governor of South Sinai, said adding the area such an operation would require open space.
Aqaba resident Ibrahim Salymehin said he heard one loud blast and when he arrived at the scene he saw at least three injured men taken to a nearby hospital by ambulance. A crowd gathered near the scene of the explosion several hundred metres away from a five-star hotel close to the beach. "We saw the wreckage of a taxi which was burnt, and fragmented metal scattered around the area that was cordoned off by police," another Aqaba resident, Abdullah Yashin Rawashdehd, told Reuters.