'They were innocent': Syrian family mourns victims of Jordanian strike

In an ambulance carrying the bodies of relatives killed in a Jordanian strike on southern Syria, a young man sat in shock, having lost much of his family in an instant. "We were asleep when the missile hit us. My mother, my older brother and his three children --two boys and a girl -- were killed," Nassouh al-Salim said, staring at a grey body bag. Jordan launched the Monday strikes in response to a jihadist attack on a church last week that killed nine people. Damascus says the raids killed seven people, including three children, but Jordan said they had killed more than 20 Islamic State group fighters, while expressing regret over civilian casualties. In the remote village of Al-Taf in Daraa province, which borders Jordan, a missile tore through the living room of the Salim family home, leaving a huge crater and reducing much of the modest building to rubble. Schoolbooks and children's clothes lay scattered among chunks of concrete and twisted furniture. "They were in the flower of their youth, innocent, blameless," said Yassine al-Salim, 78, another relative. "How can a government strike homes with no justification?" In another ambulance, two men sat beside a wounded child who appeared unconscious. Funerals for the dead were being held on Tuesday. Jordan said it had struck "terrorist organisations" including a "large" IS group weapons depot, adding the military had sought to avoid locations where civilians were believed to be present. Hours before the strikes, Amman announced the arrest of three Jordanians -- two brothers and another relative -- accused of carrying out the deadly attack on the Greek Orthodox church in Karak governorate. - Grief - "A plane arrived in the night, they bombed randomly. Innocent people live here, they have no connection to any faction," said Yasser al-Sardi, 46, a grocer from Al-Taf. Once in control of swathes of Syria and Iraq, IS was territorially defeated in Syria in 2019, but remnants of the group are still present there, including in the country's vast desert. The group, which was also present in Daraa province during Syria's civil war, still occasionally claims attacks, mainly against government security forces. Outside a hospital in Daraa province where the victims were taken, grieving relatives gathered while a woman wept on another's shoulder. "We received the bodies of three children, aged eight to 10 years, as well as that of a woman aged around 60 believed to be their grandmother," said Mohammad al-Fadel, head of nursing at the facility. Two other children aged four and five were wounded, he added. The strikes have sparked the biggest crisis between Jordan and Syria since Islamist authorities took power in Damascus after ousting longtime ruler Bashar al-Assad in December 2024. Syria has condemned the strikes, saying they took place "without any prior coordination". It also closed its main border crossing with Jordan on Tuesday "due to the current circumstances", suspending all passenger and commercial traffic. Jordan has struck southern Syria in the past, saying it was targeting sites used by arms and drugs traffickers. Under Syria's new authorities, the two countries have pledged to fight drug smuggling along their porous border. str-lk-mam/at/lg/rh