At least seven dead after gunmen open fire on church in Jordan | Gun violence news

At least seven people were killed and 34 others injured in an attack in Jordan’s Karak governorate in which gunmen opened fire during a funeral at a church.

The director of Jordan’s Directorate of Public Security, Obaidullah Al-Maaytah, told a press conference on Friday that seven people had been confirmed dead after the assault on a Greek Orthodox church in the village of Hamoud.

⁠Twenty-seven of the injured were being treated in hospitals, he said.

The search for the gunmen continues, Al-Maaytah added, promising that “the perpetrators will be arrested and our national unity will not be affected.”

Survivors reported hearing an explosion at the start of the funeral procession, after which masked attackers broke into the church and began shooting for several minutes.

State television channel Al-Mamlaka reported that security forces had been deployed to the church and were pursuing two suspects, who got out of a vehicle and opened fire.

Khaled Burqan, present at the funeral, told Al-Mamlaka that dozens of people were present at the procession. One of the attackers carried a pistol, he said, and the other a rifle.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack.

Without naming a specific group, Interior Minister Mazen al-Faraya told the news conference that the “terrorist” attack was “unprecedented” and had been carried out by a group “with no connection to humanity.”

“This country will never be dragged into terrorism and violence,” he said, adding that “Jordanians have never seen anything like this before.”

Earlier, Jordan’s King Abdullah II promised that authorities would confront the attackers “with the severest sanctions.”

“The blood of the Jordanians is precious, and we will strike with an iron fist anyone who goes too far against this country,” he said in a message on X.

The United Arab Emirates Ministry of Foreign Affairs, for its part, condemned what it described as “terrorist and criminal acts” and declared that it rejected any form of violence “aimed at undermining security and stability”.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres also strongly condemned the attack, said his spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric. “It goes without saying that an attack not only on a place of worship but also on a funeral procession is particularly heinous,” Dujarric told reporters Friday.

Such attacks are extremely rare in Jordan. Christians, numbering around 300,000, make up a minority of Jordan’s population of around 11.5 million, although the country is home to several biblical sites that attract Christians from around the world.

Previous attacks

This is not the first time Karak has been attacked.

In 2016, a deadly IS assault saw a group of fighters hole up in a Crusader-era castle and kill 10 people, including security guards and a Canadian tourist. Jordanian security forces eventually killed the attackers.

Karak, located about 120 km south of the capital Amman, is home to “Christians and Muslims who have lived side by side for generations,” Taylor Luck, senior Middle East correspondent for the Christian Science Monitor, told Al Jazeera.

“This community prides itself on its solidarity and interfaith coexistence,” Luck said.

If the attack was “aimed at creating divisions, we will likely see this community come back even stronger,” he added.

More broadly, the shooting has significance not only for Jordan’s Christian population, but also for Amman’s “public diplomacy” as custodian of Christian and Muslim holy sites in Jerusalem, political analyst Xavier Abu Eid told Al Jazeera.

For years, King Abdullah has sharply criticized Israel’s systemic attacks on religious sites in the occupied Palestinian territories.

“This is something that goes completely against the message that Jordan wants to send to the world,” Abou Eid said.