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.
‘HYANGDO’: A South Korean lawmaker said there was no credible evidence to support rumors that Kim Jong-un has a son with a disability or who is studying abroad South Korea’s spy agency yesterday said that North Korean leader Kim Jong-un’s daughter, Kim Ju-ae, who last week accompanied him on a high-profile visit to Beijing, is understood to be his recognized successor. The teenager drew global attention when she made her first official overseas trip with her father, as he met with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) and Russian President Vladimir Putin. Analysts have long seen her as Kim’s likely successor, although some have suggested she has an older brother who is being secretly groomed as the next leader. The South Korean National Intelligence Service (NIS) “assesses that she [Kim Ju-ae]
In the week before his fatal shooting, right-wing US political activist Charlie Kirk cheered the boom of conservative young men in South Korea and warned about a “globalist menace” in Tokyo on his first speaking tour of Asia. Kirk, 31, who helped amplify US President Donald Trump’s agenda to young voters with often inflammatory rhetoric focused on issues such as gender and immigration, was shot in the neck on Wednesday at a speaking event at a Utah university. In Seoul on Friday last week, he spoke about how he “brought Trump to victory,” while addressing Build Up Korea 2025, a conservative conference
DEADLOCK: Putin has vowed to continue fighting unless Ukraine cedes more land, while talks have been paused with no immediate results expected, the Kremlin said Russia on Friday said that peace talks with Kyiv were on “pause” as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy warned that Russian President Vladimir Putin still wanted to capture the whole of Ukraine. Meanwhile, US President Donald Trump said that he was running out of patience with Putin, and the NATO alliance said it would bolster its eastern front after Russian drones were shot down in Polish airspace this week. The latest blow to faltering diplomacy came as Russia’s army staged major military drills with its key ally Belarus. Despite Trump forcing the warring sides to hold direct talks and hosting Putin in Alaska, there
North Korea has executed people for watching or distributing foreign television shows, including popular South Korean dramas, as part of an intensifying crackdown on personal freedoms, a UN human rights report said on Friday. Surveillance has grown more pervasive since 2014 with the help of new technologies, while punishments have become harsher — including the introduction of the death penalty for offences such as sharing foreign TV dramas, the report said. The curbs make North Korea the most restrictive country in the world, said the 14-page UN report, which was based on interviews with more than 300 witnesses and victims who had
RSS