UK tourists hide inside Crusader castle as gun battle rages and leaves 10 dead
TOURISTS from the UK, Canada and Malaysia hid inside a Crusader castle during armed clashes between troops and gunmen at the Jordanian site, officials have said.
Jordan’s interior minister denied foreigners had been held hostage at any point during the incident at Karak Castle.
The violent stand-off capped a series of shootings that killed 10 people, including a Canadian tourist.
Also victims were seven members of the Jordanian security forces and two local civilians while 34 others were wounded. It is the deadliest and most high-profile attack in Jordan in recent memory.
Interior minister Salameh Hammad said at one point, four gunmen were firing at police and bystanders from the roof of the castle.
“Inside the castle, there was a group of tourists,” he said, adding that he did not believe the attackers were aware of the presence of the tourists during the stand-off.
“There were some foreigners that we can’t say were taken hostage, but they were hiding,” he said.
The Canadian woman who was killed was later identified as 62-year-old retired elementary school teacher Linda Vatcher.
Her adult son, Chris, was injured in the jaw and is being treated at a hospital in the Jordanian capital of Amman. The minister said a Malaysian tourist was able to escape the castle during the stand-off, while two British tourists got out after the four gunmen were killed by Jordanian security forces.
There has been no claim of responsibility for the shootings. Mr Hammad did not release the identities of the attackers or their nationalities, but said some of them appeared to have been familiar with the castle.
Jordan has faced homegrown extremism, with hundreds of Jordanians fighting alongside Islamic State (IS) militants in Iraq and Syria and several thousand more supporting IS in the kingdom.
Jordan is a key US ally, and a member of a US-led coalition fighting IS.
Sunday’s events began when a police patrol received reports of a house fire in the town of Qatraneh in the Karak district. Officers responding to the call came under fire from inside the house. Two policemen were wounded and the assailants fled in a car to Karak.