A senior US diplomat has been shot dead in Jordan. The official is understood to have shot by an unknown assailant in front of his Amman home while heading for work this morning.
The man, named by diplomats as Mr Lawrence Foley who worked for the US Agency for International Development (USAID) was killed at 7.30 a.m. (local time), and the assailant fled, a security official said.
A Western diplomat told reporters the assailant fired a few shots before escaping in an affluent part of Amman.
"There were a number of shots," one diplomat said.Witnesses said Mr Foley was shot in the garage of his two storey villa in a neighbourhood close to the bustling commercial Mecca Street in the capital.
"There was blood near the Mercedes car that was parked in his indoor garage," said a witness close to the site of the shooting, where anti-terrorist experts and senior officials in the presence of US security personnel were gathering information.
The area was put under a security cordon.Jordan's Information Minister Mr Mohammad Adwan condemned the assassination, the first ever killing of a Western diplomat in the country according to security officials.
"This attack, regardless of its motives, is an attack on the country and it's national security," Petra state news agency quoted the minister as saying.
Security was tightened even further on the fortress-like US embassy in the Abdoun district of the capital, the largest American embassy complex in the region, according to diplomats.Other Western embassies were put on a high alert as the killing sent shock waves among Western expatriates in a country where political assassinations are rare and security is normally tight.
Jordan is a major US ally in the Middle East. It signed a peace treaty with neighbouring Israel in 1994.In Washington, a State Department emergency operations dispatcher said a duty officer had been briefed on the death of a diplomat in Jordan but would not take calls about it for several hours.
USAID is the chief US agency for providing disaster relief abroad, helping impoverished countries and promoting democratic reforms.