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IS grabs Jordan pilot after plane crashes in Syria
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ISLAMIC State group militants captured a Jordanian pilot after his warplane crashed while conducting airstrikes over Syria, the Jordanian military said yesterday. It was the first instance of a foreign soldier falling into the group’s hands since the United States-led coalition began its air campaign against the extremists.
The cause of the crash was not immediately clear. Activists monitoring the conflict said Islamic State group fighters shot down the warplane near the northern Syrian city of Raqqa, the group’s de facto capital.
The Raqqa Media Center published a photograph said to be of the pilot — in a white shirt, naked from the waist down and sopping wet — being pulled by gunmen out of what appeared to be a lake. Another picture shows him surrounded by more than a dozen fighters, some of them masked. The center said IS fighters are scouring the area in case there is a second pilot.
The US and several Arab allies have been striking the Islamic State group in Syria since September 23, and US and other international warplanes have been waging an air campaign against the extremists in Iraq for even longer. The campaign aims to push back the jihadi organization after it took over much of Iraq and Syria and declared a “caliphate.”
Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates are participating in the Syria strikes, with Qatari logistical support.
The pilot’s capture raises a nightmare scenario for Jordan, which has been sharply criticized by militant sympathizers for its participation. IS in the past has beheaded dozens of Syrian soldiers it captured in operations around the country. It has also beheaded three Americans and two Britons.
Jordan’s military said in a statement that as its air force was carrying out a military mission against the Islamic State group yesterday morning, “one of our warplanes crashed,” it said. “The pilot was taken hostage by the Daesh terrorist organization,” it added, using the Arabic acronym for the Islamic State group.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said it had confirmation from activists on the ground that the aircraft was shot down.
The Raqqa Media Center, an agency of activists that operates in IS-ruled areas with permission of the group, said the plane was downed near the village of Hamra Ghannam outside Raqqa. It posted photos of militants posing with shards of wreckage. It also posted a photo of the pilot’s military identification card, identifying him as Mu’ath Safi Yousef al-Kaseasbeh.
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