Islamic State ISIS militants claimed on Friday that a US female hostage, Kayla Muller, has been killed in a Jordan air strike in Syria.
Report says that the woman died during air strikes on Raqqa. Ms Mueller was working with Syrian refugees when she was kidnapped in 2013.
Jordan said it carried out aerial bombardments on ISIS targets in Syria on Thursday. The strikes were carried out in response to the killing of a Jordanian fighter pilot by ISIS militants.
The US state department said it could not confirm the reports, but “people are looking into them”.
A video of Moaz al-Kasasbeh being burned alive in a cage was posted online by ISIS earlier this week. He was captured by militants in December after his F-16 fighter jet crashed in Syria. The video is believed to have been filmed on 3 January.
Foreign Minister Nasser Judeh said Thursday’s strikes were “the beginning of our retaliation” against ISIS. He also said, “We’re upping the ante. We’re going after them wherever they are, with everything that we have,” he said.
Thousands rallied in Jordan’s capital, Amman, on Friday morning in support of their government’s military response.
ISIS reported on Twitter that, “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 report remains unconfirmed and a person close to the case, who has spoken to the hostage’s family, said her parents had not been notified by the White House or other official sources.
According to the ISIS site, a group that monitors online jihadi messages, the Islamic State reported on Twitter that Mueller, of Prescott, Ariz., “was killed when she was buried beneath the rubble of the building”.
