platform of Christian media, narrowly avoided death or injury when bombs rocked three hotels in Amman last week, which killed at least 57 people, BosNewsLife monitored Monday, November 14.
They apparently checked out of their accommodation near the Radisson Hotel on November 9, just hours before a wedding party was attacked there, killing and injuring many people.
The group included Jim Rice, managing editor of Sojourners, Patricia Edwards-Konic, editor of Quaker Life magazine, Everett Thomas, editor of The Mennonite, and Sherri Wood Emmons, managing editor of Disciples World, a magazine of the Christian Church ‘Disciples of Christ’.
In a statement to media, the journalists said they had "observed among the gracious, hospitable people here the same shock and grief many of us in the US experienced following the attacks on our own country on 9-11,", a reference to the September 11, 2001 terror attacks.
BELT FAILED
On Monday, November 14, Sajida Mubarak Atrous al-Rishawi, who was allegedly one of the four Iraqi suicide bombers, remained in jail after she appeared on Jordanian Telecision late Sunday, November 13, confessing that she and her husband entered the Radisson, both aiming to detonate explosives-packed belts worn underneath clothing inside a wedding party.
But al-Rishawi said in her televised confession that her husband, Ali Hussein Ali al-Shamari, attacked with his suicide bomb, but that her own belt failed to explode. "My husband detonated (his bomb) and I tried to explode (mine) but it wouldn’t," said al-Rishawi during the three-minute television segment, in which she was shown wearing the disabled belt and appearing anxious. "People fled running and I left running with them," she said.
While some expressed joy over her capture, some questioned if she was really involved in the bomb plot and wondered if a fair trial was possible. The Christian journalists who survived the terror attacks said they "are saddened by the connection with the violence that has been brought upon neighboring Iraq by our own country’s military action."
MILITARY ACTION
US President George W. Bush has said however the military action in Iraq was necessary to avoid the spread of terrorism across the globe. The ACP journalists stressed they were saddened that "the terrorists who attacked Amman…seek to instill fear, not only in their direct victims but also in anyone who would consider a visit to this breathtakingly beautiful land, which has been at the very heart of so many of our religious traditions."
The suicide attacks are expected to undermine Jordan’s efforts to attract more Christian tourists to several Biblical sites. "Those of us who have walked in the footsteps of our biblical forebears and marveled at the magnificent and ancient wonders of this crossroads of history can testify to the power of this place to reach the deepest part of our humanity," the ACP journalists stressed.
"We grieve with and pray for our Jordanian sisters and brothers. We pray that people of faith around the world will refuse to allow fear to separate us from the people of Jordan and the Middle East, but will instead reach out and connect ever more deeply as we move forward in hope." (With BosNewsLife’s Stefan J. Bos, BosNewsLife Research and reports from Jordan and Iraq).
