Jordan Condemns Attack on Embassy in Baghdad
But an official who declined to be named did not rule out a link with Jordan's decision to give asylum to ousted Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein's two daughters and their children.
A car bomb exploded outside the embassy earlier Thursday, killing 13 people and wounding 57, according to officials at the hospitals where the casualties were taken.
A doctor at the Iskan hospital said two of the dead were Jordanian, but officials in Amman said that only 10 Jordanian embassy employees and five Iraqi were injured. "From the way it has been carried out it looks to be an intended and organized act," Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Shaher Bak told AFP, while adding, "We still don't know exactly who is responsible for this attack nor the reason for it."
But a senior official noted that King Abdullah II's decision to give a home to Saddam's two daughters and their nine children, along with his half-sister and her family, had triggered "virulent" criticism from a newspaper run by Ahmad Chalabi.
Chalabi is a member of the U.S.-backed transitional Iraqi Governing Council and a fierce opponent of the Saddam regime, who has been sentenced by Jordan in absentia to 22 years in prison for allegedly embezzling 900 million dollars from a bank he ran here.
He has repeatedly claimed that he and his brother were the victims of a conspiracy between Saddam and the Jordanian royal family.
The Mutamar newspaper of his Iraqi National Congress accused Jordan on Tuesday of having "welcomed members of the ousted regime and their families" and of having kept silent at Iraq's destruction, the official said.
Dozens of angry Iraqis stormed the embassy after the blast, tearing the Jordanian flag and ripping up and burning pictures of King Abdullah and his father, the late King Hussein.
The crowd yelled curses against Jordan and Jordanians, saying "We want to kill them all," an AFP correspondent witnessed.
U.S. troops and Iraqi police forced them out again, but back on the street, they hurled rocks at a Jordanian embassy employee before police escorted him to safety and U.S. soldiers dispersed the crowd with a warning shot and sealed off the area with tanks.
Bak also said the acts of vandalism were "intended and organized".
Aysar Abu Ghazaleh, a Jordanian working at the Palestinian mission in Baghdad, said the Jordanians had been afraid of an attack but suggested another reason.
"We expected this because so many Iraqis here are trying to get visas into Jordan. They are almost always rejected and leave the embassy vowing revenge," Ghazalah said. Ahmed Ali Jasim, a medic at Iraq's ministry of health, said "The target was the Jordanian embassy. People hear about how Iraqis are treated in Jordan and there is hatred."
Information Minister Nabil Sharif said Jordan was determined to identify the perpetrators of this "odious crime" and bring them to justice.
"We don't know who was behind this terrorist attack but once they are identified we will bring them to justice and they will get the punishment they deserve," Sharif told AFP.
One of Washington's closest Arab allies, Jordan stayed out of the U.S.-led war on Iraq but allowed the deployment of 6,000 U.S. troops on its territory, provoking the ire of the Saddam regime.
Jordanian Foreign Minister Marwan Moasher told AFP that U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell had called him to express regrets at the bombing.
"I told him that we want a full investigation and he said that they will do it," he added.
German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer also told Moasher, "We are shocked at this despicable act of terror," and expressed sympathy for the relatives of the dead, a statement in Berlin said.
A member of Iraq's transitional Governing Council condemened the attack and insisted it would not be allowed to harm relations between Iraq and Jordan.
"The Governing Council condemns this criminal act aimed at the Jordanian embassy which cost innocent lives," Ghazi Ajil Al-Yawar told AFP. "It will not affect the fraternal relations linking Iraq to Jordan."