Troops Killed Jordanian Soldier in West Bank Clash, Israel Says

The Israeli army reported that its troops killed one Jordanian soldier and wounded a second Sunday in a clash in the occupied West Bank. No Israelis were hurt, the army said.

The skirmish occurred in the Jordan River Valley near the Damia Bridge (also called the Adam Bridge), about 17 miles north of Jericho and less than a mile inside Israeli-occupied territory.

The army said that an Israeli patrol noticed footmarks in an unpaved military road that runs along the Jordanian border and sighted two men in Jordanian army uniforms.

The men were ordered to halt, but instead they opened fire on the patrol, the army said. The Israeli patrol returned the fire, killing one man and lightly wounding the other, who was taken into custody and is being questioned.

Maj. Gen. Itzak Mordechai, chief of the Central Command, arrived at the scene soon after the incident and commended the unit for its action.

The army said that there have been two other infiltration attempts from Jordan this year and three incidents involving shots fired at Israeli soldiers from across the border.

Meanwhile, the Israel Defense Forces weekly publication, Bamahane, quoted an unidentified intelligence source as saying that current events in the Persian Gulf are leading toward “an inevitable military clash.”

The publication also asserted that Israeli intelligence had alerted the United States beforehand to the likelihood of an Iraqi attack on Kuwait but that the Americans “remained complacent.”