--- title: "Briefing Room: Attack in Jordan Leads to Airstrikes in Syria, And More." description: A drone strike killed three US soldiers at a base in Jordan. Washington has responded with airstrikes in Syria — and the escalation may not stop there. url: https://fronts.co/videos/briefing-room-attack-in-jordan-leads-to-airstrikes-in-syria-and-more.md canonical: https://fronts.co/videos/briefing-room-attack-in-jordan-leads-to-airstrikes-in-syria-and-more/ datePublished: 2026-10-30T18:00:09.000Z dateModified: 2026-10-30T18:00:09.000Z author: - name: Simon Whistler url: https://fronts.co/authors/simon-whistler/ publisher: Fronts image: "https://media.fronts.co/cdn-cgi/image/width=1200,height=630,fit=cover,gravity=auto,quality=80,format=auto/images/articles/briefing-room-attack-in-jordan-leads-to-airstrikes-in-syria-and-more-466e3f8f.jpg" type: NewsArticle language: en access: members isAccessibleForFree: false tokens: 4961 --- Welcome back to the briefing room, the weekly show that he endeavors to bring you all the global conflict stories that should feature more prominently in the headlines than they actually do. This week, we're starting with a rapidly unfolding breakdown between Jordan and Syria after a terror attack against Jordanian Church led to retaliatory strikes on Syrian soil. Then we're headed to the war-torn nation of Niger, where the country's ongoing breakdown has forced its neighbor to deploy troops abroad for the first time in over half a century. Finally, we've got to discuss new developments in Ethiopia where two attacks in the Uromia region have left all sides, pointing fingers, but nobody held responsible. As usual, we've got lots to discuss, so let's get into it. Our lead story of the day begins with the events of last Friday, the 23rd of October, where a Greek Orthodox Church in the Jordanian government of Krak was the site of a mass casualty incident. On that day, the church at question was holding funeral services for a local resident when, according to eyewitnesses, a vehicle approached the church with a driver and at least three gunmen inside. The gunmen killed seven people at the scene, with another two having succumbed to their wounds in the following days, according to the last available tally at the time of writing. Another 40 people were wounded, and the gunmen fled the scene without being intercepted by local law enforcement. Immediately, Middle Eastern and global analysts concluded that in all likelihood, the attack had been carried out by an organized jihadist group, most likely the Islamic State, and that, although Krak governor is relatively distant from the Syrian border, it was more likely that if this were an Islamic State cell, then its members had travelled from a border crossing in southern Syria. While Jordan does deal with an internal threat from Islamic State elements, the group has a far easier time operating in post-Assad Syria, especially the contested area south of Damascus than it does in Jordan, where security forces are highly competent and well resourced. The Islamic State didn't claim credit for the attack immediately, but that's hardly a surprise. Syria and elsewhere, the group sometimes declines to claim credit until weeks or even months after the fact. Jordanian forces spent the next several days scouring the nearby countryside for the attackers, using drones and patrols to comb through valley and highland areas, while sealing off the surrounding area with checkpoints. By Monday, the three suspected gunmen had been tracked to an abandoned house not far from the village where they carried out their attack. After a battle in which all three of the men were wounded, they were arrested, and in the process they were identified as Jordanian citizens from the same family, including two brothers at a brother-in-law. The driver of the truck remains unaccounted for, and is not referenced in official sources. By the time the three had been taken into custody, residents from Hamoud, the village where the attack took place, had largely confirmed the global media that they felt comfortable ruling out a local motive for the attack. Hamoud, at the wider Khara governor, known for close and enduring ties between the Christian and Muslim communities, whereas the three gunmen, and the truck they arrived in, weren't familiar to anybody in the village. One resident, Sultan al-Qitan, told the new Arab that there were no local feuds or interpersonal disputes that he knew of that would come anywhere close to providing a motive for an attack like this. Why did Jordanian society react with shock as well? This is a country that considers itself to be very safe and very closely monitored by its own security forces compared to the rest of the region. Not only that, but it's one of the Middle East's most pluralistic societies overall. It's a country that's managed to preserve that pluralism, for the most part, across the last 15 years of chaos after the Arab Spring. Taken together, the circumstances of the attack all pointed to an outside jihadist origin, and on Monday evening, the Jordanian Air Force seemed to validate those suspicions when it launched a wave of their strikes into southern Syria. The strikes targeted two Syrian governors at the South of Damascus, Darat and Suweda, where elements within the nation's ethnic Druze minority have recently been at odds with the Syrian transitional government. Because of the divide within the southern provinces, the area is suspected of being a hotbed for Islamic State and other jihadist activity, where Islamist non-state actors can hide out and avoid scrutiny from security forces while interacting with other groups that have all had the same idea. Arms traffickers, elements within the drug trade, Hezbollah cells, and more. According to Jordan, the Monday Air strikes were targeting, quote, "Hideouts of terrorist organizations," and, while the nation's military didn't formally identify the groups that it was targeting, government spokesman Mohammed al-Mamani claimed that the Islamic State was the group in the crosshairs. According to Jordanian field intelligence, over 20 Islamic State-filiated operatives were killed in the strikes. But Syrian authorities get very different version of events when they acknowledge the strikes in the following hours. Syria's civil rescue service indicated that at least seven civilians had been killed in the strikes, including a woman and three children from a single family. Syrian authorities didn't indicate that many Islamic State fighters were present, at all, aware the airstrikes impacted. Jordan, in its initial statements, made no mention of civilian casualties, although the government later acknowledged unspecified numbers of civilians had been impacted and expressed its regrets. Syrian authorities immediately announced an investigation into the airstrikes. At the heart of the matter is whether Jordanian authorities had alerted their Syrian counterparts ahead of the strike. Jordan says, yes, they did. Syria says, no, they didn't. In a statement from Damascus, Syrian leaders emphasized, quote, "the importance of joint field and security coordination regarding any actions in the border regions," end quote. But then emphasized, more pointedly, that any joint action should be taken in a way that, quoting again, "preserves the sovereignty of the Syrian Arab Republic and safeguards the security and stability of both brotherly nations," end quote. Syria's foreign ministry condemned the strikes outright as a violation of Syrian sovereignty as before long Syria's port authority announced the closure of a keyboard crossing with Jordan, cutting off commercial and passenger traffic in both directions. And as Jordanian officials continue to try and explain their version of events, there's one particular detail that stands out. By its own description, Jordan launched the strikes to go after the Islamic State, but according to the Chief of Jordan's Public Security Director Major General Obad allah Al-Matea, who announced the arrests and revealed the identities of the three men who carried out the church attack, the trio weren't even tied to the Islamic State in the first place. When asked, Al-Matea said "the gunmen were Sunni militants," but weren't representing a large group, quoting him, "they only represent themselves." Al-Matea did specify that alongside the men authorities discovered a large ammunition cash in the abandoned home, oh, where they were appended, but he didn't provide any indication as to whether the ammunition cash was created by an organized jihadist group, or whether the three men had acquired that ammunition themselves. And if the three really weren't members of the Islamic State, then that raises the large question. Why did Jordan choose to attack what it claimed were Islamic State fighters in airstrikes that Syria denies knowing about in advance, based on intelligence that according to Syria led Jordanian warplanes to kill innocent people? Unfortunately, we don't have answers to any of those questions, at least not yet, but rest assured that we will be watching the situation closely as it evolves in the coming days. Next we turn to the nation of Niger, where the military government in Na'amay is still struggling to oppose its own Islamic State insurgency, as well as the al-Qaeda linked jihadist faction Jhinim. But rather than another mass casualty attack on Nigerian forces or another brazen assault on the capital city, this week's Niger story has more to do with the countries more than neighbour, Algeria. This past Sunday, the Algerian Parliament approved a resolution put forward over the past few days to authorize a deployment of Algerian troops to Niger in the coming weeks. Details on the deployments are quite hazy. Algeria hasn't yet announced the number of soldiers who will be deployed, nor the specific places that those soldiers will be headed. But on its face, the new resolution is extraordinary for one key reason. Algeria, categorically, doesn't do things like this. Phonation is one of the most staunchly non-interventionist in the world, relatives who is size and economic power, and aside from a chilly rivalry with neighbouring Morocco, over the western Sahara territory and other issues, it's hardly involved in conflicts or rivalries beyond its own borders at all. In fact, the last time that Algerian troops deployed to another country was over half a century ago when Algerian troops travelled to support Egypt in the Arab- Israeli War of 1973. Recently, there have been a few telltale signs that Algeria's posture on foreign deployments was starting to change. The nation is well aware that western Sahara is becoming a settled issue, with more and more countries formally or informally supporting Morocco's claim to the territory, and with aid budgets drying up for up to 170,000 ethnic, Sarawi refugees who live on Algerian soil. For their reason, Algeria's geopolitical priorities are shifting, especially as multiple jihadist and separatist movements spread across the Sahel, and neighboring Libya and nearby Chad, each deal with internal issues of their own. At the clearest sign of Algeria's growing willingness to act beyond its borders came in August of this year. When Algeria sent four, Russian-made Sukhoi Su-30 fighter jets, a refueling plane, and attacked Kaleir lifted to Niger at the request of the authorities in Namay. At that time, Niger was struggling to suppress a mutiny among its front-line troops that had evolved into a failed coup attempt, and although Algeria's forces aren't known to have participated in the effort to suppress the coup, its warplanes did provide significant deterrent power to prevent a follow-on uprising or a secondary palace coup. Now, Algeria is looking to send ground troops into Niger for long-term deployments in a mission that will focus on protecting Algerian-linked assets, according to Senator Belkachem Bugitti. Speaking to the Associated Press, Bugitti explained, "We are not sending our soldiers to wage war in Niger, but for a mission to secure economic infrastructure, protect Algeria's economic and strategic interests, particularly its oil facilities in Niger." Indeed, Algeria has long cultivated energy assets in Niger, particularly the Trans-Saharan Gas Pipeline, which is supposed to transport natural gas from Nigeria through Niger and then to Algeria, where that natural gas can easily be exported across the Mediterranean to Europe. The project is overseen by Algeria's state-owned energy company, Sonnetrack, which is, in turn, the single largest company in all of Africa. As for what we can glean from Algeria's decision in a broader sense, two trends stand out. The first is that, despite its early reservations about Niger's military regime and a sharp decline in relations last year after Algeria shot down a drone from Niger allied Mali after it flew into Algerian territory, Algeria now seems to see Niger's hunter as an ally worth supporting in the Sahel. It's not particularly hard to see why, either. The regime in Niger is hardly an ideal partner, but the alternatives include a new military regime that could overthrow the current one and be even more unpredictable or an outright takeover by the Islamic State or Genim. At this stage, the Nigerian civil opposition simply isn't in a position to bring about civilian rule for the foreseeable future. So, if Algeria wants to lock down its assets in Niger and support a reasonably- friendly, reasonably-predictable Nigerian government, then the current leadership is the best option it's likely to get. Second, we simply cannot discuss the presence of Algerian troops on the ground without discussing Russia's paramilitary Afrika Korps, Niger's primary international guarantor. Niger hosts only around 200-300 Afrika Korps troops, a far cry from the 2-3,000 deployed in neighboring Mali, and those Afrika Korps troops have been underwhelming, to say the least. They spend most of their time in Niger's primary airbase, attached to its international airport, where they provide intelligence, drone, and training to port to the Nigerian military, while providing regime protection forces for the hunters' leaders. But those Russian paramilitaries only travel to the frontlines relatively rarely, and during the most recent mutiny insider report suggested that they defended themselves at the airbase and otherwise waited to intervene until it became clear that the Nigerian military had a decent shot at holding on to power. In this regard, Algeria isn't a competitor to Moscow. In fact, Algeria maintains close relations with Russia even today, and it's the first export customer to receive Russia's most advanced warplane, the Su-57 felon. But between the three Su-hell military regimes, Niger, Mali, and Burkina Faso to the south, and Algeria, Russia is the primary security guarantor on the western half of the Sahara and Sahara region, basically by default. So with Algeria now deciding to send its own troops into Niger to try and protect its assets, the subtext of a situation is clear. Russia may or may not be trying its best, but Algeria does not have faith that Russia can keep Niger stable and keep Algerian assets protected without direct intervention on Algeria's part. Finally, we turn our attention to Ethiopia, where, as we've covered many times recently on France, and on our YouTube channels, the nation is descending back into a state of open warfare. But while Ethiopian forces are mostly concentrated in the north, fighting a combination of ethnic Tigray rebels and ethnic Amharafano militias, while sizing up neighboring Erit rea, the last week some Ethiopia struck by a pair of attacks in the central region of Uromia, where at least 60 Ethiopian Orthodox Christians have been killed over the last several days. The best-sourced reports on the attacks have come from the Ethiopian clergy, which describes a pair of mass casualty attacks in the districts of Merti on the 20th of October, and Shurka on the 24th. In the first attack, 14 Christians were killed in a single ambush, and in the second instance, 46 Christians were left dead. According to the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, the attacks have also left over 20 people hospitalized with serious injuries, and resulted in the burning of more than 20 homes. The church, however, has not disclosed the precise details of those attacks, nor has it attributed responsibility to any outside organization. The regional government in Uromia, however, has been quick to point fingers, blaming a rebel group called the Uromo Liberation Army, or OLA, and accusing it of trying to incite a religious conflict. The OLA recently allied with Ethiopia's other major rebel groups, including the Tigray TPLF, and major elements within the Amharah Farno in the so-called Alliance for Survival, although the OLA has denied having carried out any attacks on behalf of the rebel coalition. Other sources and witnesses filled in other details. A local resident who'd lost his father in one of the attacks described in ambush where attackers surged in from all directions without warning, while a church official indicated that in the higher casualty attack, government security forces did arrive on the scene, but failed to stop what was happening. Now, the overall murkiness of the situation is unfortunately not unusual in this part of Ethiopia, where violent attacks are relatively common, but can go unreported or only be disclosed publicly long after the fact. But based on the current international understanding of affairs there, these kinds of mass casualty attacks targeting Orthodox Christian believers are unusual to say the least. While the Uromo Liberation Army is known to carry out attacks across Uromia, with Orthodox Christians sometimes in the crosshairs, the group is explicitly secular, and it 's made up of roughly equal numbers of Christians and Muslims, as well as smaller numbers of followers of a local indigenous religion. More to the groups, Christians have any particular distaste for another Christian sect. The OLA's Christian elements include numerous fighters and civil allies from the Orthodox Church, as well as Protestants. The OLA's objectives, meanwhile, have much more to do with the pursuit of political autonomy and self-determination than any desire to influence the way that any religion is practiced in Ethiopia. The Orthodox Church does claim that attacks against Christians have been increasing recently and insisted, in a social media post, that it had been trying to raise alarms with local authorities prior to these latest attacks. But violence against civilians in Uromia doesn't just target Christians, and the OLA now claims that Ethiopian forces were responsible for the killings. To be clear, that doesn't seem particularly likely, a massacre of Christian Orthodox civilians would be just as unusual for Ethiopian forces as it would be for the OLA. Both factions do employ brutal tactics in their low-grade war against each other, including the use of summary executions, torture, force disappearances, and war rape, according to Amnesty International. Nevertheless, both the OLA and Ethiopian government forces have their own well- established modus operandi, and this particular sequence of attacks doesn't fit into either one. Of course, somebody is responsible for these killings, and either a rebel- aligned faction or a government-aligned faction could have chosen to perpetrate attacks like these for a few reasons. The Uromia regional government accused the OLA of trying to stoke religious tensions and inflame religious violence, and that certainly could be the case, just as the local government could be trying to leverage religious tensions to its own benefit. Either side could have some reason to believe that these particular Orthodox communities were aiding the other side, or involved in something that the government or the rebels might have considered a threat. Or a third faction in Uromia could be to blame, or armed bandits, or religious extremists. Either way, these latest revelations have left the world with lots of unanswered questions and no resolution. In a part of Ethiopia, where attacks like these just don't make very much sense. Thank you for watching.