Jordan Church Attack Today: Three Arrested After Nine Christians Killed in Karak

The doors were closed as the gunfire rang out. Inside the church, women and children waited behind those doors while the shooting went on outside, and witnesses later told The National what that small act of closing a door had meant for the people sheltering within.

Gunmen opened fire during a funeral at a Greek Orthodox church, Saint George's, in Hamoud village, Karak governorate, Jordan, on Friday 23 October, killing nine people. The assault happened at about 2pm Jordan time during a funeral for a woman in the church, The National reported.

Mourners in the courtyard were mostly men, while women and children were mostly inside the church, according to The National. That detail, reported plainly, is what makes the witness account that follows so harrowing to read, because it describes a funeral crowd split in seconds into those outside and those behind a closed door.

Karak Church Funeral Shooting: Nine Killed in Jordan

The wounded toll is not settled, and this article will not pretend otherwise. The Jerusalem Post, reporting Reuters, says at least 34 others were wounded, while another report put the wounded figure at 40, so the honest figure to carry is a range of 34 to 40 wounded, with attribution to the separate reports.

Other details also differ between outlets, and no single figure for them is stated here as settled, because the sources do not agree and those details do not change what happened to the mourners.

The coffin was hit with two bullets, but those inside the church were mostly spared the carnage.

Those are the words of witnesses, as told to The National, after people inside closed the church doors as gunfire rang out. The image of a coffin struck by bullets during a funeral is almost too stark to take in, and it explains why this attack has stayed in the news for days rather than fading after the first reports.

On Saturday 24 October, hundreds of Jordanians attended a funeral service for eight of the nine Christians killed, also held at Saint George's, The National reported. To return to the same church the next day, to bury eight of the nine in the place where the shooting had occured, took a kind of courage that deserves to be named plainly.

Three Arrested After Jordan Church Attack in Karak

On Monday 26 October Jordanian security forces arrested three men after a shootout. They were found hiding in an abandoned house in Karak, were wounded in the shootout, and no security personnel were injured, the Jerusalem Post, reporting Reuters, said.

The Times of Israel names the three arrested men as brothers Hazzah Zaidan Mohammad and Mishal Zaidan Mohammad, and their brother-in-law Ahmad Sami Hussein, all Jordanian. Naming them here follows that reporting, and it does not prejudge any court process that may follow their arrest.

No group had claimed responsibility and the attackers' motive remained unknown at the time of reporting, the Times of Israel said. No perpetrator group is named in this article, because none has claimed responsibility and the motive is not established in the sources.

Jordan declared three days of mourning for the victims, and King Abdullah II ordered authorities to respond with an iron fist, the Times of Israel reported. The mourning period and the king's order together show how seriously the Jordanian state treated an attack on mourners at a church funeral, rather than as an ordinary crime.

The earlier reporting on this attack followed the same unfolding story day by day, including the first report of 7 killed at a funeral in Karak, gunmen killing 9 at a funeral in Karak as Christians buried their dead, and thousands mourning 8 victims in Hamoud. The toll reported in those early accounts was updated as the fuller picture emerged, and this article carries the nine killed as reported in the later accounts.

Jordan Strikes in Syria After Karak Church Attack

On Monday 26 October Jordanian aircraft struck suspected armed-group positions in southern Syria in retaliation, the Times of Israel reported. Jordan said the operation was coordinated with Damascus, while Damascus rejected that account, so the question of coordination is disputed and is reported here as disputed.

Syrian authorities reported civilian deaths from the strikes, and those civilian-casualty claims should be attributed to the Syrian side, as the Times of Israel reporting does. This article does not present the Syrian casualty claims as independently verified, and it does not present Jordan's account of coordination as accepted by Damascus.

The strikes add a second layer of grief and dispute to a story that began with a funeral. Families in Karak are mourning nine of their own, while families across the border in Syria are, on the Syrian authorities' account, mourning civilians killed in the retaliation, and the two griefs are now tied together in the same news cycle.

The arrest report that followed the strikes is covered in the report of Jordan arresting three over the deadly Karak church attack, and the airstrikes themselves are covered in the report of Jordan airstrikes in Syria after the Karak church attack. Both reports belong to the same chain of events, and both show how fast a single funeral shooting became a regional story.

What happens next now depends on questions that have no answers yet in the reporting. Will the three arrested men face charges that set out a motive, and will any group ever claim the attack or will the motive stay unknown? The mourners who closed the church doors already know the hardest part of the answer, and the rest of the world is still waiting to learn what they learned in those minutes.

But the most surprising part of this story is yet to come — keep reading.