Reuters
April 22, 2010 - 12:00am
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/LDE63L17L.htm


Two rockets were fired from the Jordanian port of Aqaba towards Israel on Thursday but landed on an empty warehouse in Jordan, a Jordanian security source said.

Jordanian Minister of State for Information Nabil al-Shareef told the state news agency Petra: "A limited explosion took place in the early hours of the morning at a refrigration warehouse at the northern edge of the city that caused minor damage."

Aqaba is adjacent to the Israeli city of Eilat.

In Jerusalem, the Israeli military said security forces searched Eliat after explosions and flashes of light were reported nearby, but they found no evidence indicating a security-related incident.

Later, the remains of a Katyusha rocket were found near Aqaba and the army was investigating the source, it said.

The incident took place nine days after Israel told its nationals holidaying in Egypt's Sinai peninsula, across the border from Eilat, to leave at once, saying militants planned to kidnap Israelis.

Israeli media reports said earlier that Israel suspected the rockets were fired by militants in the Sinai. One rocket landed near Aqaba, and the other fell into the Gulf of Aqaba, the reports said.

An Israeli security source said nothing had hit Eilat, a popular resort.

Egyptian sources denied that rockets were fired from Sinai.

An Egyptian security source in north Sinai said on condition of anonymity that security patrols along the Egypt-Israel border had detected no rocket launches toward Israel from north or central Sinai.

Abdul Fadheel Shousha, governor of South Sinai province, said it would be virtually impossible to fire rockets into Israel from southern Sinai into Israel for technical reasons.

Egypt and Israel signed a peace treaty in 1979.

In 2005, rockets were fired at two U.S. warships in Aqaba port but missed their targets and killed a Jordanian soldier on land. A group claiming links to al Qaeda said it carried out that attack.

Two years later, a Palestinian suicide bomber infiltrated through the Sinai and killed three people in an Eilat bakery.

Jordan, which made peace with Israel in 1994, is one of a handful of Arab countries to have diplomatic relations with the Jewish state. Those ties were frayed by Israel's crackdown in 2000 on a Palestinian uprising that erupted in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Anti-Israeli feeling has risen in recent years and many politicians, from independent figures to the Islamist-led opposition, have repeatedly demanded the severing of relations with Israel over its treatment of Palestinians.




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