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Israeli Diplomat Wounded In Attack In Jordan As Group Claims Responsibility
contributions by Randa Habib
AMMAN & BEIRUT (AFP) - An Israeli diplomat was shot and wounded on Sunday in an attack in the Jordanian capital which Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak described as a "serious event."
The spokesman for the Israeli embassy in Jordan, Roey Gilaad, told AFP that the diplomat was "very lightly injured" when he came under fire as he left home around 8:30 a.m. (0630 GMT) for work at the embassy.
He added the "embassy enjoys full cooperation with Jordanian security" in investigating the attack, which follows massive calls in Jordan for Israel to close its embassy in there because of its massacre of Palestinians.
The motive for the attack, however, was not immediately known.
The diplomat, identified later as Vice Consul Yoram Havivian, was wounded in the hand and the leg after he left home in a metallic Hyundai-brand car that bore no diplomatic license plate, Jordanian officials added.
It carried only the green plate of a rental car, amid routine efforts not to reveal the presence of Israelis in Jordan, which has had a peace treaty with the Jewish state for the past six years.
"That means that the perpetrator or perpetrators of the attack knew their target, his movements and his car," a Jordanian official said on condition he not be named.
Doctors at the Arab Heart Center where he was treated in Amman advised he undergo surgery, but the Israeli embassy rejected the proposal and decided to bring the diplomat back to Israel, another official said on condition of anonymity.
The diplomat was seen later leaving in an ambulance toward the border with Israel, and Jordanian officials said he would be treated in Israel for wounds received from flying glass.
"My wounds are not serious, but I feel pain," the diplomat told Jordanian journalists from the ambulance.
Jordan's Information Minister, Taleb Rifai, speaking later to AFP, said the diplomat "was the target of several bullets from a Kalashnikov [rifle] fired in his direction, while he had just left his home for the Israeli embassy."
He added that "a female doctor who was nearby gave him first aid and transported him to the hospital."
Another Jordanian official specified that Havivian was wounded on the right hand and left thigh.
In Israel, state radio quoted Prime Minister Barak as telling a weekly cabinet meeting the attack is a "serious event" requiring a joint investigation.
Jordan and Israel opened diplomatic relations after they signed a peace treaty in 1994, the second between Israel and an Arab country after Egypt was the first in 1979.
The attack was the first since a new Palestinian uprising erupted in the West Bank and Gaza Strip after Israel's right-wing opposition leader Ariel Sharon visited a Muslim holy site in Jerusalem.
Islamist group claims attack on Israeli diplomat
A previously unknown Islamist group demanding Jordan break diplomatic ties with Israel claimed it carried out Sunday's attack on an Israeli diplomat in Jordan, according to a statement received in Beirut.
The group calling itself the Movement of the Struggle of the Jordanian Islamic Resistance made the claim in a statement faxed to the AFP office in Beirut, adding it would fight on until Jerusalem and Palestine were liberated.
"This attack was not the first and will not be the last until diplomatic relations are broken with the Zionists and that the last Zionist is chased from Jordan," said the statement.
"We warn all the Zionists in Jordan that they will be the main targets of our attacks and we invite, even warn the Jordanian government to chase them out," the statement said.
It was issued hours after the diplomat was shot and wounded.
"The surprise machinegun attack was led by the group of Islam's heroic fighter Ahmad al-Daqamssa," the group said, referring to the man who staged a 1997 attack on Israeli schoolgirls along the Sea of Galilee on the Israeli-Jordanian border.
Arrested by the Jordanian authorities, Daqamssa was sentenced to life in prison for the attack that left seven of the Israelis dead.
"We declare we're on the side of the revolution and Intifada of the Palestinian people and we consider ourselves in a state of war with the Israeli enemy," the statement said.
"We will only stop the jihad [holy struggle] with the liberation of al-Aqsa mosque, Jerusalem and all of Palestine," it said.
"Together, with the Palestinian people, we are fighting against a unique enemy and our holy war and our jihad will continue everywhere," the statement warned.
It suggested that it carried out the "attack on Zionist diplomats nearly three years ago" in the Jordanian capital.
A secret group, which bore a similar name, the Movement of the Jordanian Islamic Resistance, had in September 1997 claimed it fired shots at a car carrying guards for the Israeli embassy in Amman, wounding them.
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