Three US military trainers have been shot dead in an exchange of fire at an air base in Jordan, a US official says.<\/p>\n
One was killed at the base and two others died later in hospital.<\/p>\n
They were in vehicles approaching the gate of a military training centre at al-Jafr air base when they came under small-arms fire, the official added.<\/p>\n
An earlier statement from the Jordanian military said the car they were in failed to stop at the gate and was fired upon by security forces.<\/p>\n
“A total of three US service members died today in the incident in Jordan,” the official said.<\/p>\n
“Initial reports were that one was killed, two injured. The two injured service members were transported to a hospital in Amman, where they died.”<\/p>\n
The Pentagon and the White House said they would work with Jordan to determine exactly what had happened.<\/p>\n
White House spokesman Josh Earnest said the US personnel were part of an “ongoing” training mission.<\/p>\n
“The United States is interested in getting to the bottom of what occurred,” he said.<\/p>\n
AFP news agency quoted a US defence official as saying it was a “green on blue” incident, a military term for when friendly forces attack US personnel.<\/p>\n
“But we can’t say for the moment if it was a deliberate” act to kill US personnel or “some kind of misunderstanding,” the official told the news agency.<\/p>\n
The incident happened around midday local time (10:00 GMT).<\/p>\n
Jordan is a close ally of the US and a member of the US-led coalition fighting the so-called Islamic State (IS) group in Syria and Iraq.<\/p>\n
US forces have trained a small group of Syrian rebels in Jordan as well as Iraqi and Palestinian security forces.<\/p>\n
Last November, a Jordanian police captain opened fire at a police training centre near the capital Amman, killing two Americans, a South African and two Jordanians.<\/p>\n
The Jordanian government subsequently said the police captain had been a troubled individual but security sources said he was an IS supporter.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
–<\/p>\n
Source: BBC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Three US military trainers have been shot dead in an exchange of fire at an air base in Jordan, a US official says. One was killed at the base and two others died later in hospital. They were in vehicles approaching the gate of a military training centre at al-Jafr air base when they came […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":265352,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[107],"tags":[13382,13383,13384],"class_list":["post-265349","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international","tag-jordan-army","tag-jordan-shooting","tag-us-allies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/265349","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=265349"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/265349\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/265352"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=265349"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=265349"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=265349"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}