AMMAN, Nov 11: Al-Qaeda said on Friday that four Iraqis, including a husband and wife team, carried out suicide bombings against luxury hotels in Jordan that devastated one of Washington’s staunchest Middle East allies.

The triple hotel blasts on Wednesday night killed at least 57 people and injured nearly 100 were claimed a group headed by Iraq’s Al-Qaeda frontman, the fugitive Jordanian terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

“The group charged with planning, preparing and implementing (the attacks) was made up of three men: commanders Abu Khabib, Abu Muaz and Abu Omaira. Their fourth was the venerable sister Om Omaira,” the group said.

“Om Omaira chose to follow her husband Abu Omaira on the path of martyrdom,” added the statement, whose authenticity could not be verified.

UN chief Kofi Annan condemned the attacks during a visit to Amman as Jordanians gathered in mosques nationwide to mourn victims of the carnage, which jolted a country regarded as one of the safest in the volatile Middle East.

“No ideology can justify the killing of innocent people,” Annan said at a joint news conference with Jordanian Foreign Minister Faruq Kasrawi.

The death toll rose to 57 after Hollywood film director Mustafa Akkad, a Syrian and US national who produced the world renown movie The Message and “Halloween” series of horror movies, died of injuries sustained in one of the hotel blasts, a family friend said.

Deputy Prime Minister Marwan Moasher told a press conference 12 people, some of them Jordanian, had been arrested and were considered suspects in connection with the attacks.

Hundreds of people of differing nationalities have been detained for questioning since the blasts but many have since been released, according to a Jordanian official.

At least 12 foreigners are reported to have been killed in the blasts, which ripped through hotels frequented by foreign residents and Westerners travelling to neighbouring Iraq. At least 17 of the victims were at a wedding reception.

A senior Jordanian official said security staff at two of the hotels, the Grand Hyatt and Days Inn, told investigators they had spoken to two of the suspected assailants just before the bombings.

“They were curious about the way they were dressed,” the official told AFP.

Jordanians packed mosques for special noon-time prayers for the dead and several thousand people staged a march — called by trade unions and opposition parties such as the Muslim Brotherhood — in a spirited display of unity.—AFP