So close, and yet so far

Stephen Farrell and Isabel Kershner have an article in The New York Times about a poorly aimed rocket:

A rocket slammed into Aqaba in Jordan, a Red Sea resort, killing a Jordanian taxi driver and injuring five people, Jordanian officials said. Because a nearby Israeli resort reported rocket fire around the same time, suspicions focused on the theory that a rocket aimed at it had gone astray.
Jordan’s head of public security, Major General Hussein Majali, said that the rocket was a Grad derivative with a range of about 25 miles and that, judging from the angle of impact, it did not come from Jordanian territory but from the southwest. He declined to specify any particular territory. To the southwest of Aqaba lie the Red Sea and Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula. Maps show that a small corner of Saudi territory falls to the southwest of the resort, as well.
In Israel, the assumption was that the rockets were fired from Egyptian territory. Major General Amos Gilad, a senior Israeli Defense Ministry official, told Israel Radio that the source of the fire was still being examined but that “in the meantime, it seems to be from Sinai”.
But Egypt denied that was the case. General Muhammad Shousha, an official in the southern Sinai, said the rocket had not come from Egypt but said that security “procedures” were under way “in case there is anything new to know. We investigated, and there is no evidence to show that the rockets were launched from the Sinai,” General Shousha asserted in a telephone interview.
In a similar case in April, rockets were fired toward the two resorts, and one hit a Jordanian warehouse. Israel determined that those rockets had been fired from Egyptian territory. Eilat was struck by a suicide bomb in 2007, with the attacker entering Israeli territory from the Sinai.
Israel has long warned its citizens to avoid the Sinai because of the threat of attacks or kidnapping. Islamic militants, hostile to Israel as well as to Egyptian and Jordanian authorities and the West, have bombed Sinai resorts in the past.
These rockets came after a period of relative calm in Israel was broken. In the past few days, amid modest moves toward direct peace talks between the Palestinians and Israelis, rockets fired by militants in Gaza struck the Israeli coastal city of Ashkelon and an Israeli college near the Gaza border. Israeli war planes then bombed several sites in Gaza, killing a commander of the military wing of Hamas, the group that rules the strip.
A military spokeswoman, speaking on condition of anonymity under army rules, said that the Israeli military was in contact with the militaries of Jordan and Egypt.
The Israeli police and military said that four or five explosions were heard in the area of the Israeli resort, Eilat, around 8 o’clock on Monday morning. A police spokesman, Micky Rosenfeld, said the blasts were caused by rockets fired in the direction of the Israeli city. There were no reports of injuries or damage on the Israeli side.
Security forces searching the area found the remains of one rocket near the northern entrance to Eilat. In Aqaba, black uniformed security forces set up checkpoints, and a helicopter circled overhead.
A Polish tourist, Piotr Dudojc, said that he had been sleeping on the roof of a hotel in Aqaba when he was awakened by two explosions. “It was about 8 a.m. but I’m not sure because I didn’t check the time. I looked out at the city and I saw the smoke and took two photographs. I think it was near the InterContinental Hotel.” He added: “I went to have a look but I couldn’t see anything because of all the soldiers and police.”
At the sand-colored InterContinental hotel in Aqaba, Jordanian security forces armed with automatic weapons sealed off King Hussein bin Talal Street with black and yellow tape as fire department vehicles and ambulances arrived. There was no damage to the hotel visible from the road, but the street was littered with glass next to two cars. One was a Jordanian taxi with its rear fender partially dislodged and the trunk open.
Maysa Liswi, 45, an interpreter, was staying in the InterContinental while attending a six-day conference at which, she said, American instructors were training Jordanians in how to detect radioactive cargo arriving at the port. “We heard something very loud,” said Ms. Liswi, who is from the capital, Amman. “We didn’t know what it was. I thought it was a truck explosion.” She continued: “We went up in the balcony. We saw people running from the street. We asked the police and they said it was a missile from Sinai.” There was no official confirmation that the rocket had been fired from Sinai. Hotel guests appeared to carry on as usual, Ms. Liswi said, though the conference she was attending was canceled.
Sarhan Budair, an Arab citizen of Israel from Kufr Kassem, was staying at the Mövenpick Hotel in Aqaba. He said: “We heard the news from our family back home. They told us that rockets were fired at Eilat and Aqaba. They also told us that some are dead and some are injured. We didn’t expect this to happen. We are surprised. We are hoping it will end well. We are not scared and we are not going back home.”