US hostage 'killed by Jordanian air strikes', claims Isil

By The Telegraph

The Islamic State (Isil) claimed last night that an American woman it had been holding hostage for nearly two years had been killed by a stray bomb launched in a Jordanian air strike. The jihadists provided no proof that Kayla Mueller, 26, had been killed and Jordan immediately dismissed the claim as a "PR stunt" intended to divide the international coalition. US intelligence was racing to try to verify the report amid fears that Isil may have murdered Ms Mueller and was trying to pin the blame on an American ally in the Arab world.

Ms Mueller was kidnapped in August 2013 while working as an aid worker inside Syria and Isil had previously demanded a several million dollar ransom for her release. The group reportedly put out a proof-of-life video last year, showing Ms Mueller in a hijab and pleading for her life. If her death is confirmed, she would be the fourth American and the first US woman to have died while in the captivity of the jihadist group.

Isil has previously lied about the state of its hostages and it spent weeks engaging in negotiations over the Jordanian pilot only for it to emerge they had in fact killed him last month. Jordan responded by executing two convicted terrorists, including a female suicide bomber whose explosives failed to blow up during a 2005 attack.

"The criminal Crusader coalition aircraft bombarded a site outside the city of ar-Raqqah today at noon while the people were performing the Friday prayer. The air assaults were continuous on the same location for more than an hour," Isil said. "It was confirmed to us the killing of an American female hostage by fire of the shells dropped on the site," it added, saying none of its fighters were killed in the attack.

The claim she was killed by a bomb was met with scepticism by US intelligence and Hussein Majali, the Jordanian interior minister, said the statement was intended to "drive a wedge between the coalition". "They tried to cause problems internally in Jordan and haven't succeeded. They are now trying to drive a wedge between the coalition with this latest low PR stunt," he said. A White House spokesman said it was "deeply concerned" by the reports but had not "seen any evidence that corroborates Isil's claim".

The FBI had previously asked that the media not name Ms Mueller but her name was released in the Isil statement. Dennis McDonough, the White House chief of staff, accidentally let her first name slip in an interview last month.

Ms Mueller gave a speech about her work three months before she was kidnapped and told an audience in her native Arizona that the Syrian people were desperate for the international community to come to their aid. "This is the reality for Syrians two and a half years on. When Syrians hear I'm an American, they ask, 'Where is the world?' All I can do is cry with them, because I don't know," she said.

The US had feared Isil might turn its attentions to Ms Mueller after murdering two Japanese citizens in the last several weeks and then releasing a graphic video of the Jordanian pilot being burned alive. "Kayla has spent her adult life traveling the world and helping those in need," her family said in a statement, detailing how she worked in India and with both Israelis and Palestinians before moving to the Turkish-Syrian border around Christmas 2012.

"Kayla found this work heartbreaking but compelling; she was extremely devoted to the people of Syria," they said. She is believed to have been kidnapped in the war-torn city of Aleppo, where she had travelled with her Syrian boyfriend.

Ms Mueller is the last known American hostage held by Isil following the deaths of the journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff and the aid worker Peter Kassig. Peter Theo Curtis, a journalist, was freed in August last year after talks brokered by Qatar. Unlike many European countries, neither the US nor Britain pays ransoms to free its citizens being held hostage.