Jordan court sentences three men to death over Karak church mass shooting
A Jordanian court has sentenced three men to death by hanging for a mass shooting on 23 October at St George’s Greek Orthodox church in the village of Hmoud, in Karak governorate, during a Christian funeral. Nine people were killed and 34 injured. Jordan’s Armed Forces said on Sunday the men were convicted of terrorist acts, possessing weapons, promoting a terrorist organisation’s ideas, and conspiracy to commit terrorist acts. The defendants—two Jordanian brothers and their brother-in-law—have not been named publicly. They fled after the attack and were arrested three days later.
CCTV showed three armed men approaching and firing on the church. They were later found in an abandoned house in Karak, south of Amman. The Public Security Directorate said they refused to surrender and opened fire; security forces wounded all three and no officers were hurt. King Abdullah II praised the pursuit and wrote on X that the attack would meet the harshest retaliation and would not divide Jordanians.
The week after the shooting, Jordan said its fighter jets struck “terrorist organisations” in Syria in retaliation. Syrian health officials said five people, including women, children and an elderly man, were killed in a village in southern Daraa province. Jordan said it had coordinated with the Syrian government and that several “terrorists” were killed or wounded; Syria said it had not been notified in advance. Motive for targeting that church remains unclear. Karak has a sizeable Christian community in the Muslim-majority kingdom. Executions in Jordan are by hanging; unofficial pauses ran from 2006 to 2014 and from 2017 until June this year.
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