At least seven people have died and 34 more have been injured in a shooting in the Karak Governorate, in Jordan, where several armed men opened fire during a funeral at a church. Survivors have explained that they heard an explosion when a funeral was beginning, after which several armed and masked men stormed the church and began shooting. The public television station Al-Mamlaka has reported that security forces have deployed to the Hamoud church and are searching for two suspects who, according to initial reports, got out of a vehicle before opening fire.

After a brief pause in which it seemed that calm could begin to settle in the Middle East, hostilities have returned with force. The region continues to be immersed in an escalation that threatens to further broaden the conflict and drag new actors into a crisis already marked by high military tension.

Jordan has ceased to be a secondary theater of war. After last Friday's attack on a military position in the northeast of the country, in which several American soldiers died, Iran attacked Jordanian territory again this Tuesday. Tehran assured that it had reached the Rukban area, near the borders with Syria and Iraq, and that it had caused new casualties among the American troops deployed there, information that Washington has not confirmed. Beyond the victim count, the succession of attacks reveals a fundamental change: the Hashemite kingdom, for decades one of the most discreet allies of the United States in the Middle East, has moved to occupy a central place in the confrontation between Washington and Tehran.

The United States has bombed Iran for the eighth consecutive night this Sunday, and the Persian country has now set Jordan in its sights. The Jordanian army has reported intercepting three Iranian missiles, while another has fallen in a remote area in the south of the country. The attack has not caused "human casualties or material damage", according to military sources, but it has led the Jordanian Ministry of Foreign Affairs to summon the chargé d'affaires of the Iranian embassy in Amman to protest against "the brutal and unjustified Iranian attacks" against its territory, which have intensified in recent days. The Persian country has also bombed Kuwait again this Sunday for the second consecutive day. Its target has been a desalination and power plant.

Jordan has one of the wonders of the world. Anyone who has visited it can confirm that the beauty of Petra deserves this pompous title. But in the souvenir shops on Amman's commercial artery, Rainbow Street, the main selling point isn't that ancient city perched amidst the rock, but the Palestinian flag. Mugs, magnets, wallets, license plates, keychains, and necklaces: any surface is good for stamping a piece of the struggle and, in the process, pocketing a few bucks.