Sihly, who lives in Amman, had been surveying sites for the attack since Aug. 6, the statement said. He was joined by his two sons -- Abdullah and Abdul-Rahman -- and Mohammed Hamid Hussein, the Iraqi, in ''carrying out the heinous crime," in which three Katyusha rockets were fired from a warehouse situated on a hill above Aqaba.
Hussein was the leader of the Iraq-based group, the announcement said.
In the attack, assailants fired three rockets from a window at a warehouse in a poor industrial area of Aqaba, a usually quiet Red Sea resort frequented by Western and Israeli tourists.
One rocket flew across the bow of the USS Ashland, a Navy amphibious assault ship and crashed into a warehouse, killing a Jordanian soldier. Two other missiles flew in another direction, toward Israel; one landed near a Jordanian hospital, the other on the outskirts of an Israeli airport. Another ship, the USS Kearsarge, a helicopter carrier, was also in the port. Both ships left atfter the attack.
The attack was the most serious threat against the US Navy since the 2000 Al Qaeda bombing of the USS Cole in Yemen.
It was also the first attack targeting US personnel in Jordan since the October 2002 killing of an American aid worker outside his Amman home -- blamed on Iraq's Al Qaeda point man, the Jordanian-born Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.
An Al Qaeda group called the Abdullah Azzam Brigades claimed responsibility for Friday's attack.
The government statement said the four had rented a warehouse in Aqaba, where the rockets were mounted and connected to a timing device.
Sihly's two sons and the Iraqi -- who smuggled seven rockets from Iraq in the modified gasoline tank of their Mercedes -- returned to Iraq hours before the timer launched the rockets, the statement added.
The government said the four had chosen Aqaba as the site of the attack ''considering its touristic significance and in view of the media noise it will create."
