Jordan kills three, arrests five others in 'terror raid'

Three "terrorists" were killed and five others have been arrested by Jordanian security forces during a raid, after an officer was killed in a bomb blast on the outskirts of the capital, the government said Sunday.

Gunmen killed three members of Jordan's security forces in a shootout on Saturday during a raid on a "terrorist" cell a day after an officer died in a rare bomb blast.

Government spokesperson Jumana Ghneimat said that a joint unit of special forces, police and army troops raided a house in the town of Salt northwest of Amman in search of a suspected "terrorist cell".

Three members of the security forces were killed in a shootout with gunmen holed up in a building, she added.

"The suspects refused to surrender and opened heavy fire toward a joint security force," Ghneimat said in a statement.

The suspects also "blew up the building in which they were hiding, and which they had booby-trapped earlier", she said.

Ghneimat said in an update early Sunday, that the three bodies as well as automatic weapons were found under the rubble of the building, a four-storey block of apartments.

She added that two other "terrorists" were arrested, bringing the total number of people detained in Salt since Saturday to five.

The suspects also "blew up the building in which they were hiding, and which they had booby-trapped earlier", she said, adding that part of the building "collapsed" during the raid.

Local Jordanian media, quoting medical sources in Salt, said around 20 people were wounded in the operation.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for Friday's bomb blast, which also wounded six other members of the patrol in al-Fuhais, a mostly Christian town west of Amman.

The identities of the suspects were not known.

One of the members of the security forces wounded during the raid was in "critical condition", Ghneimat said

"A clean-up operation is still under way," she said, adding that units of the civil defence were at the scene to assess the damage at the building and sift through the rubble.