By Suha Ma'ayeh in Amman and Sam Dagher in Beirut
Jordan launched an effort to secure the release of a pilot held
by Islamic State militants in Syria and said his capture wouldn't
affect the nation's support for the U.S.-led coalition fighting the
extremist group.
First Lt. Muath al-Kasasbeh was taken prisoner on Wednesday when
his plane went down near the northeastern Syrian city of Raqqa--an
Islamic State stronghold. His capture triggered both outrage and an
outpouring of sympathy among many Jordanians.
But some Islamists in the country said the government shouldn't
have joined the anti-Islamic State coalition in the first
place.
"The incident will not deter Jordan from its national duty to
fight terrorism," said Mohammad Momani, a minister and government
spokesman. "Jordanian soldiers are known for the sacrifices they
made in the past and for their patriotism. We have made sacrifices
in the past, and will continue to do so for the sake of our
country."
In Washington, a defense official said the U.S. and Jordan were
working together closely to determine the cause of the crash and
the next steps.
The pilot was part of the coalition that has been conducting
airstrikes against Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL.
A media center in Raqqa affiliated with Islamic State claimed
Wednesday that the group's fighters had shot the plane down. The
U.S. denied the claim.
"Jordan is investing all its political, diplomatic and military
contacts with regional and international allies at all levels in
order to help rescue the pilot who was taken hostage," said Mr.
Momani, who declined to give further details about the efforts.
U.S. officials said they were extremely worried about the
pilot's fate.
"This is tragic. This is horrible," a U.S. defense official said
Wednesday. "All of us are very familiar with ISIL's barbarity."
In Syria, Islamic State didn't release any more photographs or
information about the pilot on Thursday. On Wednesday, the Raqqa
Media Center released a series of photographs purporting to show
the captured pilot. One shows him in his underwear carried through
water by three armed men. Another shows about a dozen armed men,
most of them masked, surrounding him.
Facebook has since shut down a page for the media center.
U.S. officials have said a mechanical problem likely caused the
crash, but the investigation is continuing.
"Evidence clearly indicates that ISIL didn't down the aircraft
as the terrorist organization is claiming," the U.S. military's
Central Command said on Wednesday.
Both the U.S. and Jordanian governments have special-operations
teams in the region to help rescue pilots. But officials said there
were early indications that the pilot didn't have a chance to try
to evade militants on the ground.
"We would have gone in and picked him up. Those capabilities are
in place. But there was very little time," a coalition official
said.
The Jordanian plane is the first coalition aircraft to crash in
Iraq or Syria since the current campaign began against Islamic
State.
Since August, the U.S. and its coalition partners have conducted
more than 830 airstrikes in Iraq, and since September they have
conducted nearly 590 strikes in Syria.
Jordan is one of Washington's key allies in the Middle East and
a long-standing partner in the war against al Qaeda and other
extremists. In the current campaign, Jordan has provided its own
pilots and jets for airstrikes as well as intelligence and
logistical support.
In Jordan, social media were flooded with posts supporting Lt.
Kasasbeh. Supporters created hashtags and Facebook pages such as:
"We are all with you."
Some Islamists, however, said Jordan shouldn't have participated
in the war against Islamic State and urged it to pull out from the
U.S.-led coalition and meet whatever demands the militants might
make later.
"Did they [Jordanian authorities] think it was going to be a
touristic excursion or that their fortifications would shield them
from the other side's strikes," said Mohammad Shalabi, a Jordanian
jihadist leader who goes by the nom de guerre Abu Sayyaf.
"To whose benefit is this war against Islamic State when it has
not threatened Jordan's borders or even threatened it with a
statement."
Mr. Shalabi is a supporter of al Qaeda's Syrian affiliate Nusra
Front.
Jordan's main Islamist political party, which is tied to the
Muslim Brotherhood, said little on Thursday. Ali Abu Sukkar, the
deputy head of the Islamic Action Front, said while his party
sympathized with Lt. Kasasbeh, it remained firmly opposed to
Jordan's participation in the anti-Islamic State coalition.
In Syria, President Bashar al-Assad's regime stepped up
airstrikes and barrel bomb attacks against areas held by both
Islamic State and rebel factions--killing nearly 90 civilians since
Sunday, half of them on Thursday alone, according to opposition
activists.
Videos posted by opposition activists on the Internet showed the
charred bodies of children being removed from the wreckage of
smoldering buildings in a town east of the northern city of
Aleppo.
The U.K.-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an
opposition monitoring group, said the regime carried out 242
airstrikes and dropped 193 barrel bombs throughout Syria since
Sunday.
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