FOX- Jordanian fighter pilots carried out devastating sorties against ISIS early Thursday, making good on their king’s vow of vengeance for the horrific burning death of a captured airman – whose hometown the jets buzzed triumphantly after the mission.
Reports from the Middle East said the latest strikes killed 55 members of ISIS, including a senior commander known as the “Prince of Nineveh.” They came a day after King Abdullah stepped up his angry rhetoric at the terrorist army in neighboring Iraq and Syria following the horrific death of Lt. Muath al-Kaseasbeh, who was burned alive in a cage in a shocking atrocity caught on a videotape released by Islamic State on Tuesday.
“The blood of martyr Muath al-Kaseasbeh will not be in vain and the response of Jordan and its army after what happened to our dear son will be severe,” said King Abdullah in a statement released by the royal court on Wednesday. A day earlier, he told U.S. lawmakers in Washington, where he had been on a diplomatic mission when the video was released, that Jordan would fight Islamic State until it ran “out of fuel and bullets.”
Thursday’s airstrikes came just hours after Jordan executed two militant prisoners in response to the killing of Kasseasbeh. But the pilot’s father told Reuters the two executions were not enough to avenge his son’s death.
“I want the state to get revenge for my son’s blood through more executions of those people who follow this criminal group that shares nothing with Islam,” Safi al-Kasseasbeh told Reuters.
The returning fighter jets roared over Al-Kaseasbeh’s hometown in southern Jordan as the king paid a condolence visit to the pilot’s family, and the monarch, himself a former general and special forces commander, pointed at the planes as he sat next to the pilot’s father.
Abdullah has said Jordan’s response “will be harsh because this terrorist organization is not only fighting us, but also fighting Islam and its pure values.”
In a statement Wednesday, he pledged to hit the militants “hard in the very center of their strongholds.”
The New York Times reported that the king was greeted warmly upon his return Wednesday by thousands of people who lined the main roads to and from the airport. The paper reported that many waved flags and displayed pictures of both the king and the pilot.(source: americasfreedomfighters.com)
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