A captured Royal Jordanian Air Force pilot is the first casualty of the U.S.-led coalition airstrike operation against the hard-line Islamic State group known as ISIS or ISIL.
Islamic State extremists claimed to have shot down the the Jordanian F-16 fighter jet over their Syrian stronghold of Raqaa on Wednesday and to have captured the pilot. But a U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) statement said "evidence clearly indicates that ISIL did not down the aircraft."
The CENTCOM commander, General Lloyd J. Austin III, said, "We strongly condemn the actions of ISIL, which has taken captive the downed pilot. We will support efforts to ensure his safe recovery, and will not tolerate ISIL's attempts to misrepresent or exploit this unfortunate aircraft crash for their own purposes."
Austin was using another name for the Islamic State group.
U.S. officials said the cause of the crash wasn't known.
However, Jordanian Information Minister Mohammad Momani told al-Arabiya TV that a “missile fired from the ground” caused the plane to go down. He added that “efforts to rescue the pilot were unsuccessful.” He stressed that he hoped “intelligence work would succeed in gaining the pilot's release.”
The militants have shot down Syrian government warplanes and helicopters in the past, in addition to Iraqi government helicopters.
News of the capture spread quickly over social media, where images were available of a young man being pulled half naked from water and surrounded by armed men.
The Islamic State claimed the man was the pilot and released pictures that it said showed its fighters holding him. One picture showed the man surrounded by more than a dozen fighters, some of them masked. A photograph of his military identification card was also released.
Arab TV channels said that the pilot was pulled out of the Euphrates River after ejecting.
Relatives, saying they had been notified of the incident by the head of the Jordanian air force, confirmed that the man in the photos was First Lieutenant Mu'ath al- Kasaesbeh, 26. The army separately confirmed his name.
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Wednesday urged the pilot's Islamic State captors to treat him humanely, his spokesman said.
The secretary-general "calls on his captors to treat the pilot in accordance with international humanitarian law,” spokesman Stephane Dujarric said.
Both the Syrian government and the U.S.-led coalition set up to fight Islamic State regularly bomb Islamic State targets in Raqqa province.
According to the U.S. Department of Defense, up to December 15, partner nations Jordan, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have been responsible for 65 airstrikes in Syria. The United States has conducted 553.
The airstrikes are part of the U.S.-led Operation Inherent Resolve, which aims to defeat the Islamic State, help Iraq defend its borders and prevent another group like ISIS from forming.
Between August 8 and December 14, U.S. and partner nations flew some 12,850 sorties over Iraq and Syria. Only 1,276 of those have resulted in airstrikes. Partner nations are responsible for approximately 14 percent of all strikes across Iraq and Syria.
Air Force Colonel Edward Sholtis told VOA in an email that many of the strikes involve dynamic targeting, "which basically means strike aircraft fly around areas near where enemy forces are operating and look for targets."
Finding, identifying and tracking those targets until approval is received to strike requires specialized equipment and training, so "frequently they do not result in a necessary strike on ISIL forces, equipment or facilities."
Andrew Liepman, a senior policy analyst with the RAND Corporation, said Washington and its allies are trying at all costs to avoid collateral damage.
"It's a lot harder to identify, to distinguish between the communities and ISIL, so we are being extremely careful, I suspect," Liepman told VOA.
"The tolerance for collateral damage in both Syria and Iraq is really, really low. We do not want to accidentally drop a bomb on the wrong guys," he added. "So that means a lot of planes are coming back to base without having dropped their munitions."
According to the Department of Defense, from December 5 through December 12, airstrikes destroyed some 14 Islamic State fighting units and positions and hit another 15 in Syria, and destroyed four such units and hit another 14 in Iraq.
The airstrikes also destroyed a number of IS-controlled buildings, bunkers, fortifications, guard towers, vehicles, excavators, bulldozers and a front loader.