The co-ordinated suicide bombings that killed dozens of people in three hotels in Jordan on Wednesday were carried out by an Iraqi married couple and two other Iraqi men, according to a statement from al-Qaeda in Iraq today.

"A group of martyrdom-seekers carried out the planning and implementation. They comprised three men and a woman who decided to accompany her husband on the path to martyrdom," said the message, which was posted on a website regularly used by the group.

"All of these are Iraqis from the land between the two rivers," the statement said, referring to Iraq’s ancient name, Mesopotamia. "They vowed to die and they chose the shortest route to receive the blessings of God."

The message, which could not be authenticated, was posted by "Abu Maysara al-Iraqi", who is thought to be a spokesman for the group led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian terrorist and the most wanted man in Iraq.

The bombers used "suicide belts for precision and to cause maximum damage", according to the statement, which boasted that "the attackers managed to enter the targets bypassing all the security measures that the agent of the British, the treacherous (King) Abdullah, has always boasted about".

At least 57 people were killed and 96 wounded when the four bombers blew themselves up in the Radisson, the Grand Hyatt and the Days Inn, three America-owned hotels in Amman that are popular with Western contractors, businessmen and diplomats visiting the city.

Most of the victims were members of a wedding party at the Radisson, where the leader of the bombers is thought to have struck.

Al-Zarqawi, the one-legged leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq who has a $25 million bounty on his head, claimed responsibility for the attack on his homeland yesterday, saying the hotels were used by American and Israeli spies. Jordan is a close US ally in the Middle East and has signed a peace treaty with Israel.

And today, al-Qaeda extended a warning that Israel would be the next target of the group: "Let the Jews be certain that their ’security wall’ east of the Jordan river is now within our reach and it won’t be long before the strikes of the mujahideen reach them too," it said.

Jordanian security officials said today that they could not confirm the veracity of the al-Qaeda statement.

The remains of three males believed to have carried out the attacks have been found but Jordanian police said it was possible a female bomber could have been at the Radisson and mistaken for a member of a wedding party that was hit by the blast.

So far 120 people, mainly Iraqis and Jordanians, have been detained in Jordan in a nationwide hunt for those behind the bombings.

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