AYE, Jordan — Jordanian warplanes carried out airstrikes Thursday as part of an apparent escalating offensive against the Islamic State, a day after Jordan’s king promised a “relentless” fight against the militants.
The quick action by Jordan underscored potential military and political policy shifts underway after the Islamic State released a grisly video showing a captured Jordanian pilot being burned to death in a cage.
Western-allied Jordan has taken part in the U.S.-led air attacks against the Islamic State, which holds wide territory in Iraq and Syria. But the vast public outrage in Jordan after the video could lead Jordan to take an even higher profile in the international coalition.
Jordan’s King Abdullah II had previously avoided direct threats against the Islamic State and has sought to keep secret the number of bombing missions the country’s air force has flown over Syria.
The army statement did give details of the latest airstrikes.
But state TV said F-16 jets — which flew over the home village of the slain pilot — had just returned from a bombing run.
Some private TV networks said the attacks hit Raqqa, the Islamic State’s main stronghold in Syria. Rami Abdulrahman, head of the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said there were reports of about 20 blasts from airstrikes near Hasaka, about 100 miles northeast of Raqqa. But it was unclear who carried out the attacks.
The jets “rocked the cowardly terrorists in their holes and hideouts since the morning,” Jordan’s foreign minister, Nasser Judeh, posted on his Twitter account.
On Wednesday, the king pledged to hit Islamic State militants with “relentless” strikes upon “their own homes.”
He continued his outreach Thursday with a visit to the family of the pilot, Lt. Muath al-Kaseasbeh, in his home village Aye in southern Jordan.
The warplanes roared overhead as the king paid his condolences. The king pointed at the planes as he sat next to the pilot’s father. Some family members called it a “victory lap” after the latest airstrikes.
Welcoming the king, Kaseasbeh’s father vowed that Jordan would stand “united” in its wider war against the “criminal and monstrous” Islamic State, which captured the 26-year-old pilot in December.
“Muath was just one of my sons. I have three others ready to serve to protect our national soil,” he told the king, who cut short of visit to Washington after the release of the video on Tuesday.
Less than 12 hours later, Jordan hanged two convicted terrorists in retaliation.
“We will be on the lookout for these criminals, and we will hit them in their own homes,” Abdullah declared, according to the state news agency Petra. “We are fighting this war to protect our faith, values and our humanitarian principles. Our fight will be relentless.”
Jordan’s chief government spokesman said the two prisoners executed Wednesday included Sajida al-Rishawi, an Iraqi woman sentenced to death for her role in a deadly 2005 terrorist attack in Amman. The Islamic State had sought her release as part of a possible prisoner swap. Jordan had offered to free Rishawi in exchange for the pilot and a Japanese journalist, Kenji Goto, held by the Islamic State.
The other inmate was Ziad al-Karbouli, who was linked to a terrorist attack against Jordanians in Iraq in 2005 and whose freedom was also demanded by the Islamic State.
It is unlikely that Jordan would fly strike missions in Syria outside those coordinated by the U.S-directed coalition. Out of about 1,000 strikes in Syria since September, the vast majority have been by U.S. aircraft.
But “the coalition is not going to turn their nose up at additional kinetic activity by one of the members,” said a senior U.S. defense official in Washington. “If they want to do more, we welcome it.”
Jordan is also struggling to assist an estimated 1.3 million Syrian refugees who have fled the country’s civil war and the rise of the Islamic State.
Hugh Naylor in Beirut and Brian Murphy in Washington contributed to this report.
William Booth is The Post’s Jerusalem bureau chief. He was previously bureau chief in Mexico, Los Angeles and Miami.
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