Jordan arrests three suspects over the Karak church attack that killed nine people

The manhunt that followed Friday's church attack ended before dawn on Monday in an abandoned house.

Jordan's Public Security Directorate said its forces located three suspects early on Monday, hiding in an abandoned house. The men refused to surrender and opened fire on the security forces. The forces returned fire and arrested all three after they were wounded. No member of the security forces was injured, and firearms and ammunition were seized, the directorate said. State television reported the arrests.

The three are accused in the attack on Friday on a Greek Orthodox church in the village of Hamoud, in Karak governorate south of Amman, where gunmen opened fire during a funeral service. Nine people were killed and 40 were wounded, as of October 26. Jordan buried the dead on Sunday, and a survivor, Sahar al Halsa, described hiding behind a pillar during the shooting and finding her cousin Assem wounded outside the church.

The directorate's statement did not identify the suspects or say whether they belong to any group. The interior minister said on Friday that extremists carried out the attack and that it was too early to say whether they had links to known groups inside or outside Jordan. Government spokesman Mohammad Momani said on Saturday that the attackers followed an extremist takfiri ideology, the doctrine that brands those who reject a strict reading of Islam as apostates, which groups such as ISIS have used to justify killing Muslims, Christians and Jews. No group has claimed responsibility for the attack.