AMMAN, Nov 11: Thousands of Jordanian troops kept the southern town of Maan under curfew for a second day on Monday after at least four people died in gunbattles with security forces.

Officials and witnesses said special forces made house-to-house searches for weapons and detained at least 100 people, mostly Islamists.

“Order and calm has been restored...the security forces have spread throughout the city and held it under their control. They are combing the area for possible members of the group we are looking for,” Information Minister Mohammad Adwan told Reuters.

Witnesses said several thousand regular troops backed by armour poured overnight into Maan, about 320 kms south of the capital Amman, reinforcing the counter-terrorism forces that stormed the town of 40,000 at the weekend.

“Before dawn the army entered the city and enforced the curfew,” said one resident contacted by mobile phone on the edge of Maan, where most telephone lines remained down.

Sporadic gunfire could still be heard, witnesses said, but there was no repeat of Sunday’s clashes with hundreds of armed youths. Residents said scores of people had been wounded and the death toll could exceed the official tally of three gunmen and one policeman killed.

Adwan said the security sweep would end only when activists deemed a threat were jailed and illegal weapons held by residents in the tribal city, where possession of arms was a matter of traditional honour, were seized.

The fighting began after elite counter-terrorism forces launched a hunt for about 30 Muslim militants said to be linked to the killing of a US diplomat in Amman two weeks ago.

But officials said militant leader Mohammad Chalabi, known as Abu Sayyaf, and three of his aides were still on the run.

Abu Sayyaf, who is a sympathiser of Osama bin Laden, escaped after a shootout with police late last month.

Officials said the crackdown in Maan was aimed at Islamists who might foment civil unrest or launch sabotage attacks in the event of a US-led war on neighbouring Iraq.

Maan is a traditional stronghold of Islamic militants. It has staged pro-Iraq demonstrations and price riots in the past.

Osama bin Laden has appeal in the religiously conservative town, which has tribal links to Saudi Arabia. Many people in Maan hold dual Saudi and Jordanian nationality.

Many Jordanians resent US policies which they view as applying one set of standards to Iraq and another to Israel.

Jordan, a US ally wedged between Israel and Iraq, is thought to have seized nearly 100 Islamists in a hunt for the gunman who killed senior US aid official Laurence Foley on October 28 in the country’s first murder of a Western diplomat.

Jordan has won a hefty rise in US military and economic assistance this year as a reward for openly supporting US President George W. Bush’s “war on terrorism”.

Interior Minister Qaftan al-Majali accused “armed outlaw groups” of being behind the Maan clashes, and said people from unidentified Arab countries were among those arrested.

Jordan has in the past accused Iraqi agents of inciting popular passions in the impoverished south of the country.

But politicians blame the town’s history of civil unrest on economic deprivation and perceived neglect by a central government viewed as favouring other regions.—Reuters/AFP

WARNING: The deadly crackdown is intended to send a stark warning to potential dissidents as the authorities prepare to take a deeply unpopular pro-US tilt against Iraq, analysts said on Monday.