JERUSALEM (AP) — Gunmen opened fire during a funeral at a church in Jordan on Friday, killing seven people and wounding 34 others, authorities said.
The shooting took place at a Greek Orthodox church in Karak, about 180 kilometers (110 miles) south of the capital, Amman.
Images being broadcast on Jordanian state television show two gunmen who appear to be holding pistols approaching the church and firing shots. A third man who appears to be holding a semiautomatic rifle then appears and opens fire, and all three then run toward the church.
A government statement said that the attack was “carried out by unknown assailants,” but didn't say whether any gunmen were captured or killed. It said that “investigations are underway at full speed.”
Karak is home to a minority Christian population.
In 2016, gunmen ambushed police in a series of attacks in Karak, including at a Crusader castle popular with tourists, killing 10 people, including seven officers, and wounding dozens. Jordanian security forces killed those gunmen after a long standoff.
Jordan’s director of public security, Maj. Gen. Obeidallah Maaytah, said at a news conference that 27 of the wounded in Friday's shooting were still being treated.
King Abdullah II said on X that Jordan “will confront the terrorist act that targeted Karak with the harshest penalties” and offered his “deepest condolences to the families of the martyrs, and our wishes for recovery to the wounded.”
Condemnation of the slayings came from around the region, including from Lebanon, Syria, Egypt and Oman.
Ahmed al-Tayeb in Cairo, the grand imam of Al-Azhar, the Sunni Muslim world’s foremost religious institution, offered his condolences to the families of victims in Friday’s shooting, calling it a “heinous terrorist attack.”
Iraqi Foreign Minister Fuad Hussein called his Jordanian counterpart and “affirmed Iraq’s solidarity with Jordan in the face of terrorism,” Hussein’s office said in a statement.
A security officer stands guard a Greek Orthodox Church where gunmen opened fire during a funeral earlier in Hamoud village, in Jordan's Karak governorate, Friday, Oct. 23, 2026. (AP Photo)
A security officer stands guard outside a Greek Orthodox Church where gunmen opened fire during a funeral earlier in Hamoud village, in Jordan's Karak governorate, Friday, Oct. 23, 2026. (AP Photo)
A man looks through a gap in a stone wall toward a Greek Orthodox church where gunmen opened fire during a funeral hours earlier in Hamoud village, in Jordan's Karak governorate, Friday, Oct. 23, 2026. (AP Photo)
Recent efforts to throttle Ukraine’s access to satellite systems have created a blame game of sorts among Trump administration officials and their allies, who have offered mixed messages about what led to the sudden restrictions on Kyiv's ability to intercept Russian strikes.
The limitations placed on Starshield — SpaceX’s military-grade version of the Starlink satellite internet service and the backbone of Ukraine’s drone operations and communication — last week alarmed the country's military and government officials, with commanders reporting lost drones and disrupted missions.
President Donald Trump has asserted that the service is running again at full speed. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, however, said Friday that restrictions were still in place.
The episode and subsequent lack of accountability have sent shock waves through Russia hawks and Ukraine's allies on Capitol Hill. Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal announced a new inquiry into how the technologies were slowed down for Ukraine’s defense systems.
Questions have percolated since last week about who ordered the interruptions to the Elon Musk-made satellite internet system that Ukraine has relied on for years to counter Moscow's attacks.
Trump has maintained that he didn’t make the call, while also saying Musk should not be blamed. Vice President JD Vance has hinted at White House coordination with Musk, while Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth have denied any administration involvement.
Musk — one of the GOP's biggest donors and a Trump ally — indicated that because Ukraine was using the military-grade version of his technology, questions about the service should be directed to the Pentagon.
Here are the players in their own words:
Over the last week, Trump has repeatedly told reporters that he didn’t order restrictions on a satellite communications system used by Ukraine’s military, causing its drones to lose speed.
The president also has doubted the disruption came from Musk, formerly a close adviser and frequent companion, saying last week that “it wasn’t me, and I don’t think it was Elon."
“Elon will never do anything wrong,” Trump told reporters Friday. “I know him very well. He’s a fair person.”
On Thursday, Trump appeared to confirm that the service had been down and claimed that it was once again working at optimal speeds. The Wall Street Journal reported that Musk had agreed to lift restrictions, and Trump demurred when asked if he had requested to lift the cap.
“You know, whether I called or whether somebody else called, doesn’t make any difference,” Trump told reporters. “I guess the bottom line, he put it back.”
By Friday, Trump said he had not heard that there are still problems with the service and declined to comment on who ordered the restrictions to Starshield, telling a reporter: “I wouldn’t tell you if I did know.”
In Cincinnati on Thursday, Vance was asked about Musk’s involvement in the slowdown of Starlink and Starshield in Ukraine and whether it warranted an investigation.
“I think that fundamentally, Elon Musk runs a private corporation,” Vance told reporters. “And I think it’s completely understandable that he doesn’t want to get in the middle of what is a war between two state actors without the United States government effectively directing him on what to do.”
Vance continued: “So I don’t think this is about Elon. I think it’s fundamentally what is America’s policy in Ukraine and Russia going to be.”
Rubio has insisted that the Trump administration and the U.S. government more broadly had nothing to do with interruptions to Ukraine’s access to crucial satellite data.
Speaking to reporters in India on Wednesday, Rubio said for the third time in four days that any throttling of network access to Ukraine was not directed or ordered by Trump or anyone else in his administration. He suggested, though, that the owner of the system — Musk — may have been involved.
“What I can tell you with certainty is the president of the United States nor anyone in our system ever requested that any changes to that system be made, and that’s what we said repeatedly,” Rubio said. “The president has nothing to do with the decisions that are made by Starlink and Starshield and by Mr. Musk. That’s a private company. The president doesn’t run that company and can’t direct that company to do anything.”
Hegseth has echoed Rubio's comments, denying on Tuesday any American role in slowing down the satellite internet service while also pushing the responsibility to Musk's company.
“We haven’t pulled anything back,” Hegseth told reporters, before adding that “there are terms of service that ultimately need to be complied to.”
He offered no elaboration on what terms of service Ukraine needed to comply with but said that “Starlink has the option to make those decisions.”
Musk, the world's richest man and leader of the company behind Starlink and Starshield, last week put the onus on the Trump administration.
“Starshield systems are owned and controlled by the US government. Any limits on speed or usage are decided by the US military and ultimately POTUS,” he wrote Oct. 14 on X.
“Starlink is a commercial service owned and controlled by SpaceX. Usage of Starlink is limited to civilian or defensive activities and cannot be used for offensive military action, as doing so would be inappropriate for a commercial company,” Musk added.
The wartime president has been working to reverse the restrictions imposed without warning last week, calling it "a planned operation.”
Zelenskyy spoke to a bipartisan group of U.S. lawmakers Monday, saying in a video of the briefing posted to social media that “we still face speed restrictions on Starlink and Starshield services in different parts of the front, and we still have no explanation for this. Just different strange stories.”
Zelenskyy says he spoke this week with Rubio, who told him that the Starshield and Starlink service would be fully restored within 48 to 72 hours.
But the limits on "Starlink and Starshield are still there, and the speed has still not been restored,” the Ukrainian president said Friday during a remote address to the Hudson Institute, a Washington think tank. Ukraine made repeated checks and faces the same speed restriction of about 100 mph (160 kph), he said.
Amiri reported from New York and Arhirova from Kyiv, Ukraine. Associated Press writers Aamer Madhani, Seung Min Kim, Konstantin Toropin, Matthew Lee, Lisa Mascaro and Ben Finley in Washington contributed to this report.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio arrives to speak with members of the media at the Taj Mahal Palace hotel in Mumbai, India, Wednesday, Oct. 21, 2026. (Kylie Cooper/Pool Photo via AP)
President Donald Trump speaks at a campaign rally at the T. Ed Garrison Arena, Wednesday, Oct. 21, 2026, in Pendleton, S.C. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)
Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy answers media questions before his meeting with Finnish Prime Minister Petteri Orpo in Kyiv, Ukraine, Thursday Oct. 22, 2026. (AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky)
