Roman-era burial ground found on collapse site in Jabal Al Jofeh — minister

AMMAN — A burial ground dating back to the Roman period has been discovered in the Jabal Al Jofeh neighbourhood during Greater Amman Municipality's (GAM) clearing of the debris of one of the buildings that collapsed recently, the Jordan News Agency, Petra, reported on Wednesday. 

Amman is one of the oldest cities in the world, with the human-made statues at Ain Ghazal thought to date back 9,000 years ago, Tourism Minister Lina Annab noted in a statement released after the discovery. 

Annab said the burial ground in Jabal Al Jofeh takes the form of a rectangular, carved-rock cave, nine metres in length and four metres wide, inside which are five graves with arcs on top of them, carved with Roman decorations from the first and second centuries AD. 

Dozens of families were evacuated in January when three buildings collapsed in the east Amman neighbourhood. Authorities were initially notified that part of a residential building in Jofeh had collapsed.

Reports said a young engineer from the area saw cracks in one building and called the Civil Defence Department (CDD), after which he managed to convince the residents to evacuate shortly before the first building collapsed.

The CDD evacuated hundreds from the surrounding buildings with the help of police and social development officials.

The concerned agencies evacuated dozens of families of more than 380 people and provided them with alternative accommodation upon the directives of His Majesty King Abdullah.

While the families alleged that authorities’ “negligence” was behind the collapse, the Jordan National Building Council maintained that arbitrary construction and cesspools were the primary cause.

On March 6, GAM started clearing debris from the site where three buildings collapsed in Jabal Al Jofeh.