Three US Troops Confirmed Dead In Jordan Shooting: US Official

WASHINGTON, (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 04th Nov, 2016 ) - Three US troops were killed in a shooting attack outside a Jordanian training facility on Friday, a US official said, following earlier reports that one or two US personnel were dead.

"A total of three US service members died today in the incident in Jordan," the official said. "Initial reports were that one was killed, two injured. The two injured service members were transported to a hospital in Amman, where they died." "The service members were in vehicles approaching the gate of a Jordanian military training facility, where they came under small arms fire," the official added.

"We are working with the Jordanian government to gather additional details about what happened." The shooting took place at the gate of the Al-Jafr base when the car carrying the US trainers failed to stop, the Jordanian army said, adding that a Jordanian officer was also wounded.

A US defense official described the incident as "green on blue," a military term for when friendly forces attack US personnel. "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 AFP.

The incident comes almost a year after a Jordanian policeman shot dead two US instructors, a South African and two Jordanians at a police training center east of Amman, before being gunned down.

Washington said at the time that the two Americans killed in that attack were employees of the private firm DynCorp, contracted by the State Department to train Palestinian forces. DynCorp International spokeswoman Mary Lawrence said the firm's employees had all been accounted for after Friday's shooting and none had been wounded.