The father of a Jordanian pilot captured by the Islamic State group in Syria pleaded for his son’s release on Thursday, asking him to treat him well in captivity as a fellow Muslim.
There has been silence from the extremists about the fate of their captive, First Lieutenant Muadh al-Kasasbeh, since gunmen from the group dragged him away following his crash on Wednesday morning.
Al-Kasasbeh was carrying out air strikes against the militants when his warplane crashed near the northern Syrian city of Raqqa, the Islamic State group’s de facto capital.
The group has executed captured Iraqi and Syrian Muslim soldiers in the past but the pilot’s father, Safi Yousef al-Kaseasbeh, said in the Jordanian capital, Amman: “I direct a message to our generous brothers of the Islamic State in Syria: to host my son, the pilot Muadh, with generous hospitality. I ask God that their hearts are gathered together with love, and that he is returned to his family, wife and mother.”
He added: “We are all Muslims.”
The pilot is the first known military member to be captured from the international coalition that has been waging a bombing campaign against the Islamic State group for months, trying to break its control over territory stretching across Syria and Iraq.
After the crash, al-Kasasbeh was pulled by gunmen from a body of water and hustled away, according to photographs published by the Raqqa Media Centre which operates in areas under IS control. He appeared to be able to walk and the only visible injury was what appeared to be a spot of blood at his mouth.
The cause of the crash was not immediately known.
The US military said on Wednesday that evidence “clearly indicates” that the militants did not shoot down al-Kasasbeh’s F-16, bt the pilot’s uncle told journalists that the family had been told by the Jordanian government that his warplane was downed by a missile.
Speaking at a gathering of the al-Kasasbeh family and extended tribe in the southern Jordanian town of Karak, Younes al-Kasasbeh said the family was told that his nephew was flying at a height of 400 feet on a bombing mission when the militants hit him with a heat-seeking missile and his plane went down in the Euphrates River.
He said three other warplanes in the same sortie had wanted to rescue him, but were wary of striking militants in the area for fear of killing al-Kasasbeh and so were ordered to return home.
Meanwhile, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported that government air strikes in another Syrian stronghold of the Islamic State group killed more than 21 people including children.
The group said Syrian military aircraft struck two locations in the northern town of Qabassen, including a market, causing the casualties. The death toll was likely to rise because people were still digging through the rubble to find bodies. The strike was also reported by another Syrian monitoring group.
