Witnesses saw a man with his face covered outside the home of a US diplomat at about the time he was shot dead, Jordanian officials said today as they probed a claim of responsibility for the assassination.

AN assassin pumped eight shots into an American diplomat outside his Amman home yesterday in the first known killing of a Western envoy in the Jordanian capital.

Unidentified gunmen killed an American diplomat today as he left for work in the Jordanian capital Amman, officials said.