Jordan’s King Abdullah vowed a “relentless” war against Islamic State on their own territory yesterday in response to a video published by the hard-line group showing a captured Jordanian pilot being burned alive.
Jordan hanged two Iraqi jihadists, one a woman, yesterday and vowed to intensify military action against Islamic State.
“We are waging this war to protect our faith, our values and human principles and our war for their sake will be relentless and will hit them in their own ground,” state TV quoted the King as saying .
Jordan, which is part of the US-led alliance against Islamic State, had promised an “earth-shaking response” to the killing of its pilot, Mouath al-Kasaesbeh, who was captured in December when his F-16 warplane crashed over northeastern Syria.
EU criticises Jordan’s immediate execution of two Iraqi jihadists following killing of pilot
Government spokesman Mohammad al-Momani said yesterday: “We are talking about a collaborative effort between coalition members to intensify efforts to stop extremism and terrorism to undermine, degrade and eventually finish Daesh.” Daesh is a derogatory Arabic term for Islamic State. He said it was a continuation of Jordan’s long standing policy in fighting hard-line Islamist militants and that King Abdullah, who cut short a trip to the US, headed a meeting with senior security officials yesterday.
“All the state’s military and security agencies are developing their options. Jordan’s response will be heard by the world at large but this response on the security and military level will be announced at the appropriate time,” Momani said.
Islamic State had demanded the release of Sajida al-Rishawi in exchange for a Japanese hostage whom it later beheaded. Sentenced to death for her role in a 2005 suicide bomb attack in Amman, Rishawi was executed at dawn.
Jordan also executed a senior al-Qaeda prisoner, Ziyad Karboli, an Iraqi man who was sentenced to death in 2008.
The Jordanian pilot was the first from the coalition known to have been captured and killed by Islamic State. It is home to hundreds of US military trainers bolstering defences at the Syrian and Iraqi borders, and is determined to keep the jihadists in Syria away from its frontier. The fate of Kasaesbeh, a member of a large tribe that forms the backbone of support for the country’s Hashemite monarchy, has gripped Jordan.
Some Jordanians had criticised the King for embroiling them in the US-led war that they said would provoke a militant backlash but the pilot’s killing produced a wave of outrage and calls for revenge. In a televised statement to the nation, the King urged national unity and said the killing was a cowardly act of terror by a criminal group that has no relation to Islam. Muslim clerics across the Middle East, even those sympathetic to the jihadist cause, also expressed outrage, saying such a form of killing was considered despicable by Islam.
There was widespread shock and anger across Jordan at the brutality of a killing that drew international condemnation.
The EU combined a statement of solidarity with Jordan over the killing of the pilots with criticism of its immediate execution of two Iraqi jihadists.
There are at least 250 Islamist militants in Jordanian prisons, almost half of them were arrested in the past year and are Islamic State sympathisers. Jordan said on Tuesday the pilot had been killed a month ago. The government had been picking up intelligence for weeks that the pilot was killed some time ago, a source close to the government said.