Jordan tries 5 IS suspects over deadly border attack

A Jordanian court today opened the trial of five Syrians charged with planning a deadly attack claimed by the Islamic State group near the Syrian border last year, a judicial source said.

"The five accused, all Syrian and aged 20 to 26, appeared in court and pleaded not guilty," the source said.

The suicide bombing on June 21, 2016 killed seven soldiers in a no-man's-land near the Rukban crossing with Syria.

Soon after the attack, the army declared Jordan's desert regions that stretch northeast to Syria and east to Iraq "closed military zones", stranding thousands of Syrian refugees in the area.

The charge sheet said the five suspects all lived in the Rukban camp, which is home to around 60,000 Syrian refugees.

One of them, an alleged IS member, arrived in the camp in February last year and recruited the others to plan the attack, it said.

Jordan is part of the US-led coalition fighting IS.

The UN refugee agency says it has registered more than 650,000 Syrian refugees in Jordan since Syria's war broke out in 2011. Amman says it hosts 1.3 million Syrian refugees.

(This article has not been edited by DNA's editorial team and is auto-generated from an agency feed.)