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Are they reporting this interesting little FACT on CNN et al? Hmmmmm ... if not, maybe someone should draw their attention to the following ...


Suicide Attacks Kill at Least 57 at 3 Hotels in Jordan's Capital
November 10, 2005

The tightly coordinated blasts bear the hallmark of Al Qaeda, intelligence officials say, and shred the nation's reputation as a relatively safe zone.

By Ashraf Khalil, Ranya Kadri and Josh Meyer

AMMAN, Jordan — Suicide bombers carried out nearly simultaneous attacks on three Western chain hotels here Wednesday night, killing at least 57 people, wounding more than 100 and emphatically ending Jordan's status as an oasis of relative calm in the Middle East.

The blasts struck the Grand Hyatt, Radisson SAS and Days Inn in the Jordanian capital just before 9 p.m., sending clouds of black smoke billowing into the sky and leaving some of the bloodied victims lying on plush-carpeted floors.

At the Radisson, an assailant detonated an explosives belt in the midst of a wedding party in a crowded banquet hall, resulting in extensive casualties, officials said. At the Days Inn, a car bomber was unable to breach the security perimeter outside the hotel before detonating his explosives, Deputy Prime Minister Marwan Muasher told reporters.

Emergency workers rushing to the scenes used bellman's carts to carry the wounded out of the hotels. The flood of victims overwhelmed local hospitals.

A surgeon at Istiqlal Hospital reported "bodies coming left and right." Sixteen corpses were placed in a single room and dozens of the injured were in danger of dying overnight, the surgeon said.

No group claimed immediate responsibility for the bombings, but Western intelligence officials said the multiple, tightly coordinated suicide attacks focusing on relatively soft targets bore the hallmark of the Al Qaeda network. Muasher, in an interview on CNN, said that although it was too early to tell for sure, he believed Al Qaeda-affiliated Jordanian-born militant Abu Musab Zarqawi was "obviously the prime suspect."

Early reports indicated that the majority of the victims Wednesday were Jordanian civilians. The injured included Moustapha Akkad, the internationally famed Syrian-born film director of "The Message" and "Lion of the Desert." Akkad's 30-year-old daughter, Reem, died in one of the blasts.

The U.S. Embassy was advising Americans in Amman to take what the spokesman called "common sense" precautions such as "avoiding large crowds and keeping a low profile."

The Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported that Israelis staying at the Radisson on Wednesday had been evacuated before the attacks and escorted back home "apparently due to a specific security threat."

Amos N. Guiora, a former senior Israeli counter-terrorism official, said in a phone interview with The Times that sources in Israel had also told him about the pre-attack evacuations.

"It means there was excellent intelligence that this thing was going to happen," said Guiora, a former leader of the Israel Defense Forces who now heads the Institute for Global Security Law and Policy at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland. "The question that needs to be answered is why weren't the Jordanians working at the hotel similarly removed?"

Jordan's King Abdullah II condemned the attacks, calling them criminal acts committed by "a misled and misleading group."

In Washington, President Bush said the bombings "again demonstrated the terrible cruelty of the terrorists and the great toll they take on civilized society." Bush, in a statement, pledged full support and assistance for the Jordanian government, which he called "a key ally in the war on terror."

Jordan has long enjoyed a reputation as a safe zone sandwiched between its violent, unstable neighbors — Israel and the Palestinian territories to the west and Iraq to the east. Nestled amid the tumult, Jordan looks at first like a sleepy strip of desert and rugged mountains, tourist-friendly and eager to get along politically with other Arab countries as well as the West.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-bombings10nov10%2C0%2C2022733.story?coll=la-home-world