Jordan Orders Soldiers to Shoot Anyone Who Tries to Cross Border

Jordanian soldiers have been ordered to shoot dead anyone, including a fellow soldier, who illegally tries to cross the border into another country, according to Prime Minister Modar Badran of Jordan.

Badran spoke in reply to a journalist who asked about the infiltration of a Jordanian soldier into the Hamat Gader region of the Golan Heights on Jan. 7. Israeli soldiers killed an armed man wearing a Jordanian army uniform there on that date.

Badran, whose remarks were reported Sunday by Ma’ariv, said the Jordanian army recently killed one of its soldiers who attempted to infiltrate into Syria.

In recent months, there has been an upsurge in the number of disturbances along the normally quiet border with Jordan.

A new incident was reported Sunday by members of Kibbutz Grofit, in the Arava region of the Negev, north of Eilat. But the Israel Defense Force disputed their claim.

The kibbutz members, who were working in a mango grove a few yards from the border, said a figure in “dark clothes, presumably a Jordanian soldier” fired a pistol at them and fled when they returned the fire.

Because of recent incidents, farmers working near the Jordanian border have been ordered to carry arms.

But an IDF spokesman said an investigation by the local military commander determined that the reported shots were fired by a hunter. The IDF said it found no tracks to indicate an infiltrator had crossed the border from Jordan.

There were no casualties or damage.

But the incident indicated the state of tension among Israelis in the border region because of the proliferation of incidents during the past year.

There have been four incidents so far this month in which shots have been fired, all of them in the vicinity of Hamat Gader or the Beit She’an Valley, in the northern part of the country. There were five incidents in 1989.