February 3, 2015
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| © AP Photo/Raad Adayleh Anwar al-Tarawneh, the wife of Jordanian pilot Lt. Muath al-Kaseasbeh, holds a poster of him as she weeps during a protest Monday in Amman, Jordan. |
AMMAN (Reuters) - Islamic State militants released a video on Tuesday appearing to show a captured Jordanian pilot being burnt alive in a cage, a killing that shocked the world and prompted Jordan to vow an "earth-shaking" response.
A Jordanian official said the authorities would swiftly execute several militants in retaliation, including an Iraqi woman whom Amman had sought to swap for the pilot taken captive after his plane crashed in Syria in December.
Reuters could not immediately confirm the content of the video, which showed a man resembling airman Mouath al-Kasaesbeh standing in a small black cage before being set ablaze.
The furious reaction of the Jordanian authorities made clear they treated it as genuine.
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Jordan, which has been mounting air raids in Syria as part of the U.S.-led alliance against Islamic State insurgents, would deliver a "strong, earth-shaking and decisive" response, a government spokesman said.
"The revenge will be as big as the calamity that has hit Jordan," army spokesman Colonel Mamdouh al Ameri said in a televised statement confirming the death of the pilot, who was seized by Islamic State in December.
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 for weeks and some Jordanians have criticised King Abdullah for embroiling them in the U.S.-led war that they say will provoke a blacklash by militants.
The king cut short a visit to the United States to return home following word of Kasaesbeh's death. In a televised statement, he said the pilot's killing was an act of "cowardly terror" by a deviant group that had no relation to Islam.
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