The rise of jihadists in Iraq has set the West on edge, but Damascus sees it is an opportunity to legitimize its battle against rebels and promote it as a war on "terror". 

President Bashar Assad's regime has repeatedly denied the existence of a revolt seeking political change in Syria, instead branding its opponents -- both peaceful and armed -- as "terrorists".

Radical cleric Abu Qatada was acquitted by a Jordan court Thursday of plotting an attack on the American school in Amman but he faces another terrorism charge and will remain in prison.

"The court did not find evidence to support charges against Omar Mahmud Mohammed Otman (Abu Qatada) that he conspired in late 1998 to carry out a terror attack on the American school in Amman," judge Ahmad Qatarneh said in a ruling.

Jordanian police fired tear gas to disperse angry protesters in the Islamist stronghold of Maan on Wednesday after police killed a suspect in a shootout in the southern city.

"More than 100 people demonstrated to protest the killing of a man wanted by police," a witness told AFP on condition of anonymity.

A senior army officer said on Wednesday that Jordan can defend itself against "any aggression" after Sunni Arab militants seized large swathes of neighboring Iraq.

"The Jordanian-Iraqi borders are safe. The Jordanian armed forces are capable of defending the kingdom from any aggression," border guard commander Brigadier Saber Mahayrah told reporters as they toured the border area.

A Jordanian military tribunal on Monday sentenced a man to 10 years in jail for planning to carry out an attack on alleged "devil worshipers" last year, an official said.

The man had been charged in 2013 with possessing explosives and plotting to carry out terrorist acts in the posh Amman district of Abdun, where the U.S. and British embassies are located, among others.

Jordan has reinforced its border with Iraq after Sunni Arab militants overran a crossing with Syria, a security official said on Monday.

"The Jordanian army has dispatched more troops, tanks, rocket launchers and armored personnel carriers to the border with Iraq," the official told AFP.

The Sunni militant offensive in Iraq has sparked fears in Amman that they will take the fight to Jordan, which is already struggling with its own home-grown Islamists.

The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), a powerful jihadist group that controls key areas of Syria, has seized a swathe of Iraqi territory in a lightning offensive Baghdad's forces seem powerless to halt.

An al-Qaida breakaway group's seizure of territory in Iraq and Syria has sent tremors across the Middle East, jolting neighboring countries into action over fears that the Islamic militants may set their sights on them next.

In Jordan, the army dispatched reinforcements to its border with Iraq last week to boost security, while in Lebanon heavily armed police busted a suspected sleeper cell allegedly linked to the group, known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, in raids on two hotels in central Beirut.

U.S. President Barack Obama has warned that extremist militants who have surged through Iraq in a lightning and brutal offensive could also destabilize other countries in the volatile region.

The jihadist Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) is rampaging towards the capital Baghdad in its bid to create an Islamic state that will incorporate both Iraq and Syria.

The number of people driven from their homes by conflict and crisis has topped 50 million for the first time since World War II, with Syria hardest hit, the U.N. refugee agency said Friday.

The UNHCR said there were 51.2 million forcibly displaced people at the end of 2013, a full six million higher than the previous year.