Jordanian Slain After Seizing Israeli Hostage

A lone Jordanian soldier who infiltrated into Israel shot and wounded an American visitor and held an off-duty servicewoman hostage for nearly four hours Tuesday before being killed by an army sharpshooter, officials said.

According to his victims, the man said he was avenging a brother who was killed by Jews. Military officials said he was deranged and acted on his own.

The siege ended when Israeli troops stormed a tool shed where the attacker held the hostage in a date grove near Kibbutz Lotan, a collective farm 12 miles north of the Red Sea resort of Eilat and a few miles from the rugged mountains of Jordan.

“A sniper very cleanly picked him off,” said Wendy Maayan, the kibbutz secretary who immigrated from Minneapolis.

The armed forces chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Dan Shomron, told Army Radio, “I’m convinced that Jordan still continues to be responsible so that terrorism would not infiltrate from its borders into Israel, in spite of such insane soldiers.”

New Jersey Woman

The wounded woman, Lauren Rosen of Englewood, N.J., was quoted by the radio as saying the attacker shouted in English “It’s because of my brother!” before opening fire on her.

Officials at Eilat’s Yosef Tal Hospital said she was slightly wounded by a bullet that passed through her neck.

She said it would not scare her away from the kibbutz, an assortment of brown stucco buildings that was founded by American Reform Jews in 1983 and has about 80 residents, a third of them U.S. immmigrants. It grows vegetables and dates.

A Jordanian statement identified the attacker as Farid Ali Mustafa and said he had abandoned a border observation post.

Armed with a U.S.-made M-16, the man attacked at 11:30 a.m. just outside the fenced kibbutz.

The army said hostage soldier Osnat Lev, who is in an army unit that lives and works on collective farms, was rescued after 3 p.m. by a special anti-terrorist unit.