Jordan’s ‘booby-trapped’ Salafists threaten France

Jihadist Salafists in Jordan threatened the French army with "booby-traps," warning they would open up resistance to French air strikes on Islamist strongholds in Mali onto two fronts. Abed Shehadeh, a leader Salafist preacher inside Jordan nicknamed Abu Muhammad Eltahawy, said: “Our fighters will face the French army with booby-traps. They will not be welcomed with flowers," according to the UPI news agency. The jihadist reportedly made the statement during a memorial ceremony for a fighter killed in Syria, held in Dalil, a village 45 kilometres north-east of Jordan’s capital, Amman. "I am telling the French, the Americans and the Jews: go back overseas, go back to your countries. There will be no peace between us and you,” Shehadeh added. “Jihad will continue,” he said. “Wherever they attack Muslims, there will find new fronts.” Shehadeh condemned the French military operation as a “brutal aggression." France has launched a comprehensive military campaign in Mali to stop Islamist militants, allegedly linked to al-Qaeda, advancing towards the country’s capital, Bamako.