Jack Khoury – Haaretz January 7, 2010
The Jordanian national that attacked a U.S. military base in Afghanistan, killing 7 CIA agents, was furious over the Israel's Gaza offensive, the London-based Arabic daily Al-Quds Al-Arabi reported on Thursday.
The report quotes the brother of Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi as saying that his brother, a physician, had even made numerous attempts to join Jordan's doctor's association as way of reaching the Gaza Strip and aiding the local population.
The attack was carried out by a Jordanian, Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi, who had been recruited by the CIA as a counterterrorism intelligence source.
Al- Balawi's brother added that his brother had notified their family that he intended to travel to Turkey to meet up with his wife, but she said he never arrived.
"We thought that he was in Gaza the whole time," the brother told Al-Quds Al-Arabi.
He added that the family received an anonymous phone call in which they were told that Al- Balawi had perpetrated the Afghanistan attack.
Family members said that Jordan security forces had sealed off the area of Amman in which they live, blocking media representatives from entering.
Family members said Balawi, a doctor, was a member of a large Bedouin Palestinian clan that settled in Zarqa, a hotbed of Islamic radicalism in Jordan where many dispossessed Palestinians moved after Israel's creation in 1948. He ran a clinic in an impoverished refugee camp, they said.
Also on Thursday, the Al-Qaida terror network said that the attack was in retribution for the deaths of several Pakistani Taliban leaders last year.
According to a statement posted on Islamist websites, the attack avenged the deaths of Baitullah Mehsud, the Pakistani Taliban leader killed by a US missile strike in August, as well as the deaths of Abi Saleh el-Somali and Abdullah el-Libi.
The two other Taliban commanders were killed in a drone attack in Pakistan's North Waziristan region in December.
Al-Qaida immediately claimed responsibility for the December 30 blast at a US base in Khost, south-eastern Afghanistan.
www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1140996.html
Last updated 09/01/2010
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