Jordan bombs ISIS in revenge raid for pilot terrorists burned alive then salutes dead hero

Vengeful: King Abdullah, left, offers his condolences to Safi al-Kasaesbeh, the father of Muath al-Kasaesbeh

Jordanian fighter jets pounded Islamic State today then roared over the hometown of the pilot they burned to death as the country’s King Abdullah consoled grieving relatives.
The vengeful monarch was overheard telling the pilot’s father his warplanes were returning from the militant-held Syrian city of Raqqa, having blasted his son’s killers in a devastating show of force.
It came two days after IS released a brutal video showing captured Jordanian pilot Muath al-Kasaesbeh being burnt alive in a cage as masked gunmen stood watching.
Jordan’s military, which is part of the US-led coalition against IS, has vowed to avenge Kasaesbeh’s killing.
State television showed the king sitting alongside senior officials as they visited the Kasaesbeh tribal family in Aya, a village near Karak, south of the capital Amman.
The king, in traditional Arab head dress, was met with cheering crowds and cries of “Long Live his Majesty the King, Long Live the King”.

Grief: Queen Rania of Jordan consoles Anwar Al Tarawneh, the wife of Jordanian pilot Muath Al Kasasbeh

 

Safi Kasaesbeh, the devastated father of the pilot, told the king: “You are a wise monarch. These criminals violated the rules of war in Islam and they have no humanity.
“Even humanity disowns them.”
The airstrikes on Raqqa came as a senior British diplomat said the crisis is the worst to hit the Middle East since World War II.
Veteran diplomat Sir John Jenkins said violence in the region sparked by IS could last for 10 to 15 years of chaos in Iraq, Syria and North Africa.
Sir John - the Foreign Office’s foremost Arabist - added: “This is probably the most challenging set of circumstances for countries in the region, particularly in the gulf, since the 1960s and maybe since the end of WWII.
“There’s a whole set of physical and material challenges to the national security of these states, but it is also ideological.”
He added: “I wouldn’t be surprised if we were looking at 10-15 years of instability and insecurity in Iraq and Syria and in parts of north Africa.”

Fly-past: Jordanian Royal Air Force jets fly over Karak

Sir John said anxiety about how to deal with IS was compounded by uncertainty about the West’s commitment to protect the region.
He said: “There was a time when you could simply say the answer to everything was to increase the strength of a naval flotilla, for example, in the Gulf or naval task forces off the Horn of Africa.
“I think it is far more complex than that now... we are all trying to work out how we deal with that.”
He said it was “astonishingly difficult” to find common ground between countries over how to deal with Syria and admitted the international alliance set up to tackle IS - or Daesh as it is called in Arabic - “was not particularly cohesive”.
He said claims that Saudi Arabia was partly to blame for the rise of IS - through funding of rebels fighting against President Assad - were “nonsense”.
He explained: “I think there is a lot of commentary in the British press and the American press about Daesh and Saudi Arabia.
"Sometimes there is a simplification that they are two sides of the same coin, which is in my view, simply wrong.”

On Thursday Jordanian authorities released Sheikh Abu Mohammad al-Maqdisi, a leading al-Qaeda spiritual guide who was arrested last October.
A security source told Reuters Maqdisi’s release was ordered by the state security prosecutor. The reason for his release was not immediately clear.
The self-taught intellectual was seen as the spiritual guide of the slain al Qaeda leader in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, but later disowned him for killing civilians indiscriminately.