Was the last American hostage held by ISIS killed in a Jordanian airstrike? Yahoo/Reuters

Hostage Kayla Mueller, age 26. Yahoo/Reuters

ISIS is claiming that the last American Hostage, Kayla Mueller, has died in an airstrike conducted by Jordan. Yahoo/Reuters. Jordan and the United States have not confirmed the reports while her family is hoping that she is still alive. Mueller was the last remaining American hostage held by ISIS and until now no information about her was available. Jordan has drastically increased operations against ISIS after the execution of one of their pilots. ISIS claims that the warehouse she was being held in outside of Raqqa, the de-facto capital of the Islamic State, collapsed in an airstrike. No proof of this claim was offered other then a picture of the collapsed building. Jordan claims that the militants story does not add up because the people on the ground had no way to tell who was conducting the airstrikes and questioned why Mueller would be held in an arms depot. Mueller worked as an aid worker and was abducted by ISIS. 

My Comment:

I'm not completely convinced that these claims are accurate. ISIS has very little credibility in general, and they have a history of lying about their hostages. Indeed, they most likely lied about Lt. Mouath al-Kasaesbah. Jordan believes that he was executed long before the video of his murder was released. This could very well be the case here as well. ISIS has reason to lie in this case because if they paint Jordan as killing this woman, even by mistake, they can attempt to gain sympathy from the rest of the world. They can also make Jordan look incompetent. It won't work for anyone with a brain since they were the ones keeping her in a war zone so they are directly responsible for her death, if she is indeed dead. Plus, if Mueller died, why didn't the other hostages? Are they really all being held in different places? Seems unlikely, though it is possible.  

Of course it is possible that she really did die in an airstrike. It could have been Jordan or the United States. As tragic as it is bad intel and heavy weapons don't always mix. It is very possible that Jordan or another coalition member bombed this building by mistake, not realizing that the hostage was there. Like Jordan said, if they had intelligence saying what they bombed was a weapon warehouse, they had no reason to suspect that hostages were being held in the same place. It is possible that Jordan didn't care too much about they were hitting and just hit everything that they could that was held by ISIS. Not likely though. 

As terrible as it sounds, given the way ISIS has treated their prisoners, and women in general, perhaps it was a small mercy if she did die in an airstrike. Believe me, I didn't like writing that sentence, but there is some truth to it. Of course, everyone hopes that she is still alive and gets released somehow, but given how ISIS has been beheading people left and right and even lit the Jordanian pilot on fire her fate may have been the same as the other hostages killed by ISIS...or worse. And it's not like ISIS has a problem with killing or raping women... One shudders to think about what they might have done to Mueller if they had executed her like they did with their other hostages. Especially since they seem to be trying to one-up themselves with each execution... Perhaps they would have shown her some mercy, but given how ISIS likes to treat women, I seriously doubt it. 

I've said it before but ISIS is evil incarnate. If you were to tell me back before the rise of ISIS that a group would arise in Iraq and Syria that would execute aid workers and journalists, rape hundreds of women, destroy thousands of irreplaceable artifacts, all in the name of Islam, I wouldn't have wanted to believe it. ISIS truly sounds like some bad authors idea of a radical group. But they are all too real. All I know for sure is that I would do almost anything to ensure that I wasn't captured by them if I was fighting them... And if the choice was getting executed by them or dying in an airstrike that may have killed a few of my captors, I'd choose the second option. Here is hoping that somehow, someway, the reports are wrong and that Kayla Mueller is released safe and sound.