AMMAN, Nov 12: Jordan’s King Abdullah said on Saturday logic dictated that the suicide bombers who killed dozens at luxury Amman hotels this week must have come from Iraq or Syria and called the act a ‘fight inside Islam’.

Al Qaeda in Iraq, led by Jordanian-born Abu Musab Al Zarqawi, has claimed responsibility for the attack, which killed the bombers and 54 other people at three hotels used by foreign contractors and diplomats working out of Iraq.

King Abdullah responded ‘yes, it’s a possibility’ when he was asked in a CNN interview whether the bombers could have come from Syria, but went on to speculate how they might have entered his country.

“There are only two logical places they could come across either the Iraqi or Syrian borders,” King Abdullah told CNN during an interview.

Syria is already under pressure from the United States, which accuses Damascus of allowing militants to cross over its borders into Iraq to fight US-led and Iraqi forces.

In one of the worst attacks in Jordan’s modern history, bombers wearing explosives strapped to their belts killed mostly Jordanians attending wedding parties at Grand Hyatt, Radisson and Days Inn hotels.

Al Qaeda in Iraq said four Iraqis — including a husband and a wife — wearing suicide belts carried out Wednesday’s attacks.

But Deputy Prime Minister Marwan al Muasher told a news conference on Saturday that the attackers were three ‘non-Jordanian males’ and shot down speculation that a woman among the bodies had been identified as one of the bombers. He said the bombers died in the blasts.

King Abdullah, a close US ally whose support for the invasion of Iraq angered many Jordanians, deplored the near-simultaneous blasts as an attack on innocents.

“If this was a fight against Jordanian policy, why go into a hotel and kill innocent women and children? This is a strike against the people of Jordan, and not the policies of Jordan.”

Mr Muasher, who said an official investigation confirmed Al Qaeda was behind the blasts, declined to comment on the bombers’ nationalities, but a security source said the suicide bombers were Iraqis.

Jordan, one of two Arab nations to have peace treaties with Israel, had previously been spared attacks that have hit other countries in the region.

Three Americans were killed in the explosions.

BOMBINGS SPARK OUTRAGE: The bombings sparked outrage in the country of five million people, with thousands of Jordanians — from the capital Amman to the birthplace of Zarqawi in the bleak industrial town of Zarqa — taking part in protests to denounce Zarqawi and rally behind the king.

Police have rounded up scores of people in a nationwide hunt, including underground cells, and were searching homes of Iraqi workers in poorer parts of the capital.

Earlier, King Abdullah told state news agency Petra: “It’s clear that the perpetrators of the operations were three suicide bombers wearing explosive vests with metal beads to inflict maximum number of dead and injuries.”

Suspicion about the attackers quickly fell on Iraqi guerillas.

In August, Zarqawi’s group claimed responsibility for a failed rocket attack on US Navy ships in the Jordanian port of Aqaba. Zarqawi was jailed in Jordan for 15 years in 1996, but freed three years later under an amnesty.—Reuters