US hostage killed in Jordanian air strike – Islamic State
The Islamic State group claims that Kayla Mueller, a US woman aid worker who was taken hostage, has been killed in a Jordanian air strike in Syria.
IS identified the woman as Kayla Mueller, but this has not been independently verified. A represenative of Ms Mueller’s family in the US said it had no information on IS’s statement that she had been killed.
Ms Mueller, 26, from Arizona, travelled to the Turkish/Syria border to work for humanitarian aid groups providing support to Syrian refugees and was taken captive in Aleppo, Syria, in August 2013 while leaving a Spanish Doctors without Borders hospital.
Speaking about her aid work in Turkey in 2011, she told her local newspaper, the Daily Courier: “Syrians are dying by the thousands, and they’re fighting just to talk about the rights we have. For as long as I live, I will not let this suffering be normal. (I will not let this be) something we just accept.”
State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf said: “I cannot confirm those reports in any way. We have said that there are a number of Americans being held overseas, including still by the Islamic State. I’m not going to get into further details than that.”
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Kayla Mueller and her mother, Marsha (courtesy the Mueller family)
Burned alive
IS’s claim comes just days after the group released a video appearing to show a captured Jordanian pilot, Muath al-Kasasbeh, being burned alive in a cage.
Jordanian state television confirmed that it had carried out a new round of air strikes had been carried out to avenge his death.
At least 30 IS fighters were killed on Friday in US-led coalition air strikes around the eastern Syrian city of Raqqa, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group said.
IS has murdered five British and American aid workers and journalists in recent months.
It seized large areas in Syria and Iraq and declared a self-imposed Islamic caliphate in 2014, but has come under strain after a series of defeats in Syria brought about in part by air strikes on its forces and infrastructure.
It was forced to withdraw from the Kurdish town of Kobani after four months of fierce fighting with Kurdish militia aided by US air support, and has lost ground to Syrian government and Kurdish forces elsewhere.