AMMAN — Syria closed the Nassib border crossing with Jordan on Tuesday after Jordanian warplanes struck what Amman described as militant hideouts in southern Syria, in an operation launched in retaliation for last week’s deadly attack on a church funeral in Jordan’s Karak governorate, according to Reuters.
The Syrian Civil Defence said in a preliminary report that seven people, including three children and a woman, were killed and three others wounded in the Jordanian strikes. Its emergency teams responded to four sites hit in the countryside of Daraa and Sweida provinces, it said. A Syrian health official had earlier told the state news agency that five civilians, including women and children, had been killed — an early tally that differed from the Civil Defence figure as rescue work continued. Syria’s defence ministry said one strike hit five members of the same family, and that two other strikes killed a 60-year-old man and a man aged 80.
Jordan’s armed forces confirmed carrying out the strikes, in an operation Jordanian media named "Jordanian Deterrence," and said they were conducted in coordination with the Syrian government — a claim Damascus explicitly contradicted. Syria’s foreign ministry said it had conveyed its "complete reservation" over strikes carried out without prior coordination, that it had opened an investigation, and that it stressed the importance of field and security coordination in border areas. Jordan said the strikes killed or wounded several suspected militants and destroyed sites and equipment, but it did not identify the groups targeted or give its own casualty figures. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported strikes at several locations in Daraa and Sweida, including areas near al-Muzayrib, Nassib and the Khalkhalah military airport.
Hours after the dispute became public, Syria’s General Authority for Border Crossings and Customs announced that the Nassib crossing would be closed, suspending all passenger and commercial traffic in both directions to ensure the safety of travellers and border personnel, citing developments on the ground in Daraa province. Nassib is Jordan’s only passenger and commercial border crossing with Syria, and its closure is expected to hit trade and movement between the two countries, which have spent recent years restoring economic links after years of disruption during Syria’s war.
The strikes followed a weekend of arrests inside Jordan. Senior security officials said on Monday that security forces had arrested two brothers and their brother-in-law — all Jordanians, according to Interior Minister Mazen al-Faraya — after a shootout lasting about three hours in the village of al-Jadeeda in Karak, where the three were hiding in an abandoned house. The men are suspects in Friday’s attack on a church funeral that killed nine people, an assault on Jordan’s Christian minority that prompted King Abdullah II to order security forces to respond with an "iron fist." The Director of Public Security, Major-General Obeidallah al-Maaytah, said of the suspects: "God willing, they only represent themselves."
Jordan accused the suspects behind the church attack of links to terrorist groups operating in southern Syria, according to Reuters. Such violence is rare in Jordan, a relatively stable U.S. ally in the Middle East, and Zark News examined the Karak attack and its security fallout in an explainer published on October 24. What happens next depends on whether Amman and Damascus can contain the dispute through the direct channels Syria says it has opened, or whether the crossing — a lifeline for traders and travellers on both sides — stays shut while investigations on both sides proceed. Read the Xinhua account of the strikes and the closure at peoplesdaily.pdnews.cn.
