Brides mother dies from Jordan bombing injuries

The mother of a bride, whose wedding was devastated in the Amman suicide bombings, died of her wounds in a coma today.

Hala al-Faroukah died due to severe injuries to her spinal cord, which stopped her respiratory system from functioning, said a doctor at Amman Surgical Hospital. She was in her late fifties.

Her death brings the number of people killed in the November 9 attacks at three Amman hotels to 62, including the three bombers. The al-Qaida in Iraq terror group, which is led by the Jordanian-born Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, has claimed responsibility for the attacks.

Al-Faroukah was fatally wounded in the attack at the Radisson SAS hotel where an Iraqi, identified as Ali Hussein Ali al-Shamari, walked into the ballroom during a wedding party and detonated a belt of explosives. The blast killed her husband, Khaled al-Alami, immediately, and caused the greatest number of casualties of the three hotel bombings.

The bride and groom, Ashraf and Nadia Akhras, survived the explosion without injury. But 17 of Ashraf’s relatives were killed, including his father, and Nadia lost 11 family members, including her parents.

Ashraf Akhras said today that al-Faroukah had been in a coma since she was admitted to the hospital shortly after the attack.

She died at dawn today, he said. He and his wife had visited her in hospital last night.

The Radisson hotel bomber’s wife, Sajida Mubarak Atrous al-Rishawi, was arrested on Sunday. She confessed on television that she tried to detonate her own explosives belt, but it failed and she fled the scene.