Jordanian security forces have snared a group of Iraqis for questioning in connection to Wednesday night bombing attacks and officials said one of the suicide bombers spoke Iraqi-accented Arabic before he blew himself up in the Grand Hyatt Hotel. "Indications and initial reports point to Iraqi involvement but we cannot be certain," a Jordanian official was quoted as saying by the AP.
On his part, King Abdullah II vowed in a televised address to "pursue those criminals and those behind them, and we will get to them wherever they are." "We will bring them out from their holes and bring them to justice," the monarch said.
Throughout Thursday, thousands of Jordanians rallied in the capital and other towns, dennouncing terrorism and Abu Musab al Zarqawi, the leader of al Qaeda in Iraq, who claimed credit for the deadly attacks. In an apparent response to the protests, al-Zarqawi's group tried "to explain for Muslims part of the reason the holy warriors targeted these dens."
"Let all know that we have struck only after becoming confident that they are centers for launching war on Islam and supporting the Crusaders' presence in Iraq and the Arab peninsula and the presence of the Jews on the land of Palestine," al-Qaeda in Iraq said in an Internet statement.
