Jordan says Damascus cleared its airstrikes in Daraa. Damascus says it never did.

Jordan’s military said the operation, launched Monday evening, “destroyed several terrorist positions” and killed and wounded “numerous members” of groups linked to the perpetrators of the 23 October attack on St George’s Greek Orthodox Church in northern Karak, where two gunmen opened fire on mourners at a funeral procession, killing nine and injuring 34. Islamic State claimed that attack. Jordan’s Minister of Government Communication, Mohammad al-Momani, said on Tuesday that more than 20 ISIS militants had been killed, and that Jordan “stands ready and will strike with an iron fist, without mercy or leniency, against anyone who attempts to undermine Jordan’s security”. Reuters reported Syria’s count: seven people killed, including three children and a woman. Daraa health officials told AFP six, with the same composition. One named impact site was Al-Mismiyah in Daraa, where a funeral was held for four members of a single family, three of them children.

The contradiction that matters is not the body count. Jordan’s military said the operation “was conducted in coordination with Damascus”. Syria’s foreign ministry, on 27 October, expressed “condemnation and rejection, in the strongest terms”, calling the strikes “an unacceptable violation and breach of Syrian airspace without any prior coordination” and “a blatant violation of the principles of good-neighbourliness and Syrian national sovereignty”. Damascus then closed the Nasib crossing — the sole passenger and commercial border point between the two countries — citing security concerns. Jordan’s foreign minister Ayman Safadi called his Syrian counterpart Asaad al-Shaibani to stress Jordan’s “full respect for Syria’s sovereignty” and express “sorrow and grief over the death of innocent civilian victims”. By Wednesday the two ministries had announced a joint security committee and SANA, quoting customs official Mazen Alloush, confirmed Nasib had reopened to normal traffic.

Assessment: Neither government has published evidence for its version of the coordination question, and both have reasons not to. If Damascus did clear the strikes, admitting it would confirm that Syrian airspace is available to neighbours on request — at a moment when Israeli aircraft already operate over Quneitra and Daraa near-daily, per the Security Council Report’s October forecast. If it did not, Amman struck a sovereign ally without notice and then said otherwise. The joint committee’s remit, which Al Jazeera reports extends to “field and intelligence coordination in dealing with terrorist threats”, is the tell: the fix being built is the mechanism whose absence caused the dispute. Note also that no outlet has reconciled Jordan’s 20-plus militants with the seven dead civilians — nobody has established whether these are separate sets of bodies.