Jordan hangs 10 for attacks
Jordan has executed 10 men convicted in a series of bombings and shooting attacks since 2003 that killed a British tourist, an outspoken critic of Islamic extremism and members of the Jordanian security forces.
It is the largest round of executions in recent memory and the first since pro-Western Jordan launched a crackdown on Islamic extremists two years ago, after the killing of a captured Jordanian fighter pilot by Islamic State.
Jordan is a part of a US-led military coalition against IS, which holds territory in Syria and Iraq.
The prisoners were hanged at dawn on Saturday at Swaqa Prison, about 75 kilometres south of the capital of Amman, said government spokesman Mohammed Momani.
Five others were executed for other crimes, including incest, Momani said in a statement carried by the state news agency Petra.
The assailants executed for terror convictions had been involved in six different incidents, from a 2003 bombing attack that killed 19 at Jordan's embassy in Iraq to the September 2016 shooting of local writer Nahed Hattar on the steps of an Amman courthouse.
Also listed were a 2006 shooting attack on a group of tourists at a Roman theatre in Amman in which a 30-year-old British man was killed; a December 2015 shooting attack that killed two police officers; a March 2016 shootout between police and IS militants in which an officer was killed; and a June 2016 attack by a lone gunman on an office of Jordan's intelligence agency that killed five.
Nahad Hattar had been on trial for posting a cartoon deemed offensive to Islam on social media when an assailant killed him outside the courthouse. The shooter was a former mosque prayer leader motivated by anger over the cartoon, officials said at the time.
