Jordan said on Thursday it would lead a campaign to raise funds for the U.N. agency that supports Palestinian refugees, to help it survive after the United States cut its funding.

Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi said a meeting next month in New York on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly would mobilise support for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) to continue core education and health services.

“Any shortage in funding will drive hundreds of thousands towards deprivation and despair,” Safadi, whose country has 2.2 million U.N. registered Palestinian refugees, said in Amman after meeting Pierre Krahenbuhl, the UNRWA head. Jordan will call for an Arab League meeting to lobby for donors to cover the $200 million shortfall needed to shore up UNRWA, Safadi said.

UNRWA has faced a cash crisis since the United States, long its biggest donor, earlier this year slashed funding, saying the agency needed to make unspecified reforms and calling on the Palestinians to renew peace talks with Israel.

The agency was founded in 1949 after the first Arab-Israel war, in the wake of the exodus of around 700,000 refugees who fled or were driven out of Israel on its founding as a state.

UNRWA now looks after more than 5 million descendants of those original refugees, in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and the Palestinian territories of the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

“One cannot wish 5.3 million Palestine refugees away. These are people who have rights and for many years now, for decades have faced a plight and injustice that is simply immense,” UNRWA’s Krahenbuhl said at a news conference with Safadi.

“As long as a just a lasting solution has not found of the issue of Israel-Palestine conflict we will continue to implement the mandate that the General Assembly has given us.”

The Palestinians assert the right under international law to return to homes abandoned in Israel or be compensated. Safadi said funding cuts for UNRWA undermine that right.

“The continuation of UNRWA means continued commitment by the international community to working towards a just solution of the refugees that guarantees the right of return and compensation,” Safadi said.

Safadi last week raised the plight of UNRWA with U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in Washington where officials say he warned of “dangerous consequences” to regional stability if the financial crisis were not resolved.

The U.N. rights chief said on Monday that U.S. President Donald Trump bears “a heavy responsibility” for how the media is portrayed and that his remarks could have a knock-on effect that could hurt journalists in other countries.

U.S. newspapers across the country ran editorials last Thursday defending freedom of the press in response to President Donald Trump calling some media organizations enemies of the American people.

“To label the press in this way is very worrisome,” U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein said in a wide-ranging interview days before his four-year term ends.

“The President should be aware that a heavy responsibility lies on his shoulders when it comes to the way in which the media is being portrayed,” Zeid said, speaking to Reuters, Associated Press and Agence France Presse in his Geneva office.

“Because it also has a demonstration effect, other leaders in authoritarian settings will do same thing. We’ve seen now how they mimic President Trump and so what could already be a difficult situation in other countries becomes even more difficult for the press to operate and for journalists to uncover stories and for lawyers to do their work and for human rights defenders to do their work,” he added.

Trump’s comments reflect a view held by many conservatives that many media outlets distort, make up or omit facts because of a bias against them. The Republican president has said he supports the principle of press freedom, but has described much of what the media publishes as “fake news”.

VETOES, CRISES

Zeid has been outspoken about human rights violations, earning rebukes from the United States and its ally Israel, as well as China, Myanmar, Hungary, Syria, and his native Jordan.

On Monday, he criticised world powers in the U.N. Security Council – singling out the United States, Russia and China – for casting vetoes and preventing resolution of crises or their being referred to the International Criminal Court (ICC).

“And I think that has to change, in the end the organisation can collapse at great cost to the international community and to international peace and security,” Zeid warned.

“The threats to the system altogether are very real.”

On China, he called for access to the far western region of Xinjiang following reports by activists and independent U.N. rights monitors this month about mass detention of Muslim Uighurs.

China has rejected allegations raised by the U.N. panel that 1 million Uighurs may be held in internment camps in the restive region, but said that some people underwent re-education after being deceived by extremists.

“As with all countries, the request is let us in or else we will assume the absolute worst,” Zeid told Reuters.

Militants behind an attack on Jordanian police supported Islamic State and investigations had revealed plans for more attacks on security and civilian targets, Jordan’s interior minister said on Monday.

Jordanian police said on Saturday a homemade explosive device planted near a police van killed a policeman and injured six others the day before.

The police vehicle had been maintaining security near a music festival in the majority Christian town of Fuhais, near the capital Amman and 15 kilometres (about 10 miles) from the hillside city of Salt.

In a huge security operation, Jordanian forces laid siege to a building in a residential part of Salt on Saturday night in search of those responsible for the bomb attack.

After the suspected militants refused to heed calls to surrender, the security forces stormed the building in a shoot out that resulted in the death of three militants and four security personnel, police said.

Ten members of the security forces were also injured.

Interior Minister Sameer al-Mobaideen said the militants, who blew up part of the building when the security forces stormed it, did not belong to a specific group but subscribed to Islamic State ideology.

Militants from Islamic State and other radical jihadist groups have long targeted U.S.-allied Jordan and dozens of militants are serving long prison terms.

“There were plots to wage a series of terror attacks that sought security points and popular gatherings. We know the targets but we won’t tell them so people won’t get terrified,” Mobaideen said.

King Abdullah, a Middle East ally of Western powers against Islamist militancy who has also safeguarded Jordan’s peace treaty with Israel, warned on Saturday the perpetrators of the attack would pay dearly.

SECRET INVESTIGATIONS

The monarch has been among the most vocal leaders in the region in warning of threats posed by radical groups.

The group were all Jordanian and there were no signs so far they had foreign links, Mobaideen said, refusing to give names of suspects. “The investigations are secret and ongoing,” he told a news conference

Alongside automatic weapons in the suspect’s possession, the authorities found a location where chemical ingredients for manufacturing explosives were buried, Mobaideen added.

General Hussein Hawatmeh, head of Jordan’ Gendarmerie, said the militant cell was recently set up and there were indications its members had embraced radical ideology.

“What is dangerous is that these new recruits are more impulsive than those with experience in executing operations that harm Jordan’s security,” Hawatmeh told reporters.

Jordan has been relatively unscathed by the uprisings, civil wars and Islamist militancy that have swept the Middle East since 2011.

But there have been some incidents of Islamist violence, increasingly carried out by members of powerful tribes that are traditionally the backbone of support for the ruling Hashemite dynasty.

Security forces have been extra vigilant having warned that sympathisers of Islamic State could launch revenge attacks after militants were driven out of most of the territory they once controlled in Syria and Iraq.

Intelligence officials and some experts believe widening social disparities and a perception of official corruption are fuelling a rise in radicalisation among disaffected youths in a country with high unemployment and growing poverty.

A Jordanian soldier who was convicted of killing seven Israeli school girls two decades ago has been released from prison after serving his sentence, family sources said on Sunday.

They said Ahmad Daqamseh was now in his family home in the village of Ibdir near the city of Irbid in northern Jordan.

In July 1997, a five-member Jordanian military tribunal found Corporal Daqamseh guilty of opening fire at a group of Israeli schoolchildren and killing seven of them before soldiers seized him and rushed to help the victims.

The incident took place on March 13 of that year during a school field trip in the border area in Jordan.

Daqamseh would have faced the death penalty but the tribunal said he was mentally unstable and was sentenced to life sentence which is equivalent to 20 years under Jordanian law.

A few days after the incident, the late King Hussein personally apologised for the incident, travelling to Israel to visit and pay his respects to the families of the slain girls.

Daqamseh became a hero to a strong opposition movement led by Islamists and nationalists who vehemently opposed the country’s peace treaty with Israel in 1994.

Many lawmakers had lobbied in previous years for his release in a kingdom where many see Israel as an occupier state that drove out Palestinians from their land.

Jordanians of Palestinian origin form a large portion of the kingdom’s population.

Jordanian security forces freed tourists trapped inside a medieval castle on Sunday after storming the building where armed men had taken shelter following a shoot-out with police that killed at least nine people, security sources said.

A Canadian woman, three other civilians and five police officers were among the nine killed during the exchange of gunfire between the assailants and security forces. At least 29 people were taken to hospital, some with serious injuries, the sources said.

Police in the mountainous city of Karak had earlier freed 10 people, including foreign tourists, but some were still being held in the Crusader-era castle from where the gunmen shot at security forces who were surrounding it, a security source said.

The identity of the assailants was not immediately clear.

A former government minister from Karak city, Sameeh Maaytah, said there were signs Islamist militants may have been behind the attack but the government has so far steered away from saying this.

“The operation is continuing, it has not ended and the criminals are still inside the castle … This was a group that was plotting certain operations inside Jordan,” Maaytah told pan-Arab news channel al-Hadath.

Video footage on social media showed security forces taking groups of young Asian tourists up the castle’s steep steps to its main entrance as gunshots were heard overhead.

The castle is one of the country’s most popular tourist attractions.

Prime Minister Hani al Mulki told parliament “a number of security personnel” had been killed and that security forces were laying siege to the castle. The Canadian government confirmed one of its nationals had been killed.

Police and witnesses said gunmen had earlier gone on a shooting spree aimed at officers patrolling the town before entering the castle, perched on top of a hill. They used one of the castle’s towers to fire at a nearby police station.

Police said the gunmen had arrived from the desert town of Qatraneh nearly 30 km northeast of Karak city, a desert outpost known for smuggling, where many tribal residents are heavily armed.

They had fled to Karak after an exchange of fire with the police at a residential building, security forces said.

Jordan is one of the few Arab states that have taken part in a U.S.-led air campaign against Islamic State militants holding territory in Syria. But many Jordanians oppose their country’s involvement, saying it has led to the killing of fellow Muslims and raised security threats inside Jordan.

Officials worry about radical Islam’s growing profile in Jordan and support in impoverished areas for militant groups.

Save

Few would have known Nahed Hatter who had written on Islamist violence and narratives for decades. A writer who had left Jordan for the Lebanon for his views, he had returned to his country only to be murdered this morning for a cartoon that he had posted on his Facebook page.

The post initially was made around early August leading to charges being laid against Nahed Hattar based on insulting religious identity. Hattar subsequently deleted the post and was summoned to attend court to explain his actions. The initial post is listed below and mocked the world of IS or Daesh and implies that they make up what suits their worldly needs and that they have made themselves judges over God, who is drawn as the bearded man in the background. The cartoon and the work of Hattar was focussed on challenging Islamist narratives and the writer, who lived in a Muslim majority country, distinguished this line from the vast and overwhelming majority of Muslims who seek to worship and lead their lives in peace.

Nahed Hattar was murdered on the steps of a Jordanian court today. The perpetrator shot Hattar on multiple occassions and graphics highlighted the senseless murder through postings on Facebook.

The killing has shocked Jordan and highlights how sensitive issues are regarding faith and how delineating between Islamist narratives and Muslims has become deadly work.

Charges

The State prosecutor has charged the perpetrator with 3 charges. These include, wilfull premeditated murder, a terrorist act leading to the death of a person and carrying and possessing a firearm without a license. The case has also been referred to the State Security Court.

According to a source close to the investigation, the killer, who worked as an engineer at the Ministry of Education, said during the interrogation ‘he had planned to commit the crime for some time. He did not know or hear of the writer, Hatter, till he re- published his cartoons on his Facebook page.’ The perpetrator then searched through websites and he became aware of the court date where Hatter had been summoned to attend.

The source said the offender confessed to the crime, adding that the killer had bought a gun a week beforehand. This morning he walked on foot to his office towards the Palace of Justice in Abdali – Amman. According to a confession, the killer remained in wait for the writer for almost an hour, and after seeing Hatter with his friends he followed him onto the back stairs where he fired several times hitting Hatter in the neck and arm.

The source also noted that the killer stated that he was,

“convinced that Hatter offended God and should be killed and that anyone who offends God should be killed.”

Blowback of Weapons Meant for Syrian Rebels Back into Jordan

Weapons shipped into Jordan for Syrian rebels by the Central Intelligence Agency and Saudi Arabia were stolen by Jordanian intelligence operatives and sold to arms merchants on the black market, the New York Times reported, citing American and Jordanian officials.

Some of the stolen weapons were used in a shooting in November that killed two Americans and three others at a police training facility in Amman, according to a joint investigation by the New York Times and Al Jazeera.

A Jordanian officer shot dead two U.S. government security contractors, a South African trainer and two Jordanians at a U.S.-funded police training facility near Amman before being killed in a shootout, Jordanian authorities had said in November.

The training facility was set up on the outskirts of the capital, Amman, after the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq to help rebuild the shattered country’s postwar security forces and to train Palestinian Authority police officers.

The weapons used in the shooting had originally arrived in Jordan for the Syrian rebel training program, the paper reported, citing American and Jordanian officials.

Theft of the weapons, which ended months ago after complaints by the American and Saudi governments, has led to a flood of new weapons available on the arms black market, the New York Times said.

Jordanian officers who were part of the plan “reaped a windfall” from sale of weapons, using the money to buy iPhones, SUVs and other luxury items, according to the paper, which cited Jordanian officials.

Jordanian Border Guards Killed By Suicide Bomber

Six Jordanian border guards were killed by a suicide bomber who drove a car at speed across the border from Syria and rammed it into a military post on Tuesday, security officials said.

The explosives-laden vehicle blew up a few hundred metres from a camp for Syrian refugees in a remote, desolate area where the borders of Iraq, Syria and Jordan meet, a Jordanian army statement said.

The southeastern desert area is close to where Islamic State militants are known to operate, according to a security source who requested anonymity. The source said the attack appeared to be a well-planned military operation. No group has claimed responsibility.

The army said a number of other vehicles used in the attack at around 5:30 a.m. (0230 GMT) were destroyed and that 14 other people were wounded. The suicide bomber drove out from behind a berm and dodged gunfire to reach the military post, it added.

It was the first such assault targeting Jordan from Syria since Syria’s descent into conflict in 2011 and followed an attack on June 6 on a security office near the Jordanian capital Amman in which five people, including three Jordanian intelligence officers, were killed.

The incidents have jolted the Arab kingdom, which has been relatively unscathed by the instability that has swept the Arab world since 2011, including the expansion of Islamic State in Syria and Iraq.

In a rare move, the Jordanian army’s chief of staff declared the northern and northeastern border strip with Syria a closed military zone, an order that went into effect immediately.

“Any vehicle and personnel movement within these areas that move without prior coordination will be treated as enemy targets and dealt with firmly and without leniency,” the army statement said.

International relief workers said the Jordanian authorities had also suspended all humanitarian aid to the area and that this could put the lives of refugees at risk.

U.N. agencies responsible for the well-being of thousands of refugees did not comment on the drastic move which Western aid workers said penalized thousands of refugees, almost half of them women and children who have been stranded on the border strip for months.

Jordan’s Foreign Minister Nasser Joudeh confirmed deliveries of aid to the border areas had been halted until a safer area was found.

He told state media the incident vindicated Amman’s previous security warnings about the presence of hardline extremists within the camp.

“There is a large concentration of people along this border and a big infiltration of elements from Daesh terrorists who are present heavily,” Joudeh said, using the Arabic derogatory term for Islamic State.

Jordan’s King Abdullah said the perpetrators would not go unpunished and that his security forces would deal with “an iron fist” with any group that sought to harm the country’s security or borders, a palace statement said.

Jordan is a staunch ally of the United States and is taking part in the U.S.-led campaign against Islamic State in Syria, where the jihadist group still controls large areas of territory including much of the east.

Jordan has kept tight control of its frontier with Syria since the outbreak of the war in its neighbour.

Washington condemned the deadly attack as a “cowardly terrorist act” and said it would continue “unwavering support” for the Jordanian army, a statement from the U.S. embassy said.

Since the Syria conflict began, Washington has spent tens of millions of dollars to help Amman set up an elaborate surveillance system known as the Border Security Programme to stem infiltration by militants from Syria and Iraq.

The Rakban crossing targeted on Tuesday is a military zone far from any inhabited area, and includes a three-km (two-mile) stretch of berms built a decade ago to combat smuggling. The border is heavily guarded by patrols and drones.

U.S. Patriot missiles are stationed in the kingdom, however, and the U.S. army has hundreds of trainers in the country.

It is the only area where Jordan still receives Syrian refugees, some 50,000 of whom are stranded in Rakban refugee camp in a de facto no-man’s land some 330 km (200 miles) northeast of Amman.

REFUGEES STRAIN KINGDOM

The camp’s population has grown from several thousand to over 50,000 people since last year as the fighting in Syria intensified, relief workers say.

Jordan has been a big beneficiary of foreign aid because of its efforts to help refugees but has drawn criticism from Western allies and aid agencies over the humanitarian situation at Rakban where conditions have caused several deaths among refugeees lacking sufficient medical care, diplomats say.

Earlier waves of Syrian refugees had an easier time, with some walking just a few hundred metres to cross into Jordan. Jordan sealed those border crossings in 2013.

The United Nations refugee agency said late last year Jordan should accept the new wave of refugees — their numbers have risen, aid officials say, since Russia started air strikes last September — and move them to established camps closer to Amman.

Jordan, which has already accepted more than 600,000 U.N.-registered Syrian refugees, is resisting. It says Islamic State militants may have infiltrated their ranks as most of them come from Islamic State-held areas in central and eastern Syria, and has allowed only a trickle of refugees, mostly women and children, in recent months.