Father beats two children to death, buries them in home in Jordan

A man in Jordan killed his two daughters and buried them in his home, Jordan’s Public Security Directorate said in a statement on Tuesday.

Authorities arrested the father – who confessed to beating his 9 and 12-year-old children to death - in the country's northern Ramtha district.

The man’s ex-wife told Jordanian police on Monday that he suffers from mental illness and continuously beats her children, causing her to fear for their lives.

“After receiving this information, [police] moved to the location, arrested the person [the father] and after searching for his four children, only found two inside the house,” the public security directorate’s statement read.

The police took the children’s statements, which confirmed that “their father beat them constantly and that during previous days he killed their two sisters, after beating them with a stick, and buried them around the house”.

إلقاء القبض على شخص قتل طفلتيه ودفنهما في محيط منزله في لواء الرمثا

للتفاصيل|| https://t.co/CT0CUKd5f4#الأمن_العام #الأردن pic.twitter.com/JmcSq1dUnY

— مديرية الأمن العام (@Police_Jo) July 5, 2022

After interrogation, the man “admitted that ten days ago he beat one of his daughters with a stick” to death, before burying her in his home. 

He also admitted that "days later, he beat the other, who also died as a result of the beating, [before he] threw her into a pit next to the house” the directorate’s statement said.

The bodies of the young girls have been transferred for forensic examination.

The two surviving children were sent to hospital for an investigation into their health and psychological conditions following the incident.

Police say the investigation is ongoing.

The murders come weeks after a 23-year-old Jordanian student, Iman Rasheed, died after being shot on university grounds by 37-year-old Uday Hassan in Amman.

Thousands of Arab women have since said they are ‘attending’ a strike on Wednesday against domestic violence and murders of women across the Middle East, after young women in Egypt and the UAE suffered similar fates.