The parents of a US humanitarian worker held hostage by the Islamic State group since August 2013 on Friday said they are hopeful she is still alive, after the group said she was killed in a bombing by Jordanian fighter jets.
Carl and Marsha Mueller, the parents of Kayla Jean Mueller, asked the Islamic State group, formerly known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, to contact them privately, according to a statement released by a family representative.
“This news leaves us concerned, yet, we are still hopeful that Kayla is alive,” they said in the message.
Photo: Reuters
In a message directed to “those in positions of responsibility for holding Kayla,” they said: “You told us that you treated Kayla as your guest. As your guest, her safety and well-being remains your responsibility.”
Mueller was the last-known US hostage held by the Islamic State group, which controls wide areas of Syria and Iraq.
US officials said they could not confirm that Mueller had been killed. Jordanian leaders have questioned the group’s claims.
Kayla Mueller, from the small city of Prescott, about 160 km north of Phoenix, felt compelled to help others from an early age, according to a statement from the family.
“When asked what kept her going in her mission, she said: ‘I find God in the suffering eyes reflected in mine, if this is how you are revealed to me, this is how I will forever seek you,’” the statement said.
As a high-school student at Tri City College Prep, she received several awards, in part for her volunteering with groups, such as AmeriCorps and Big Brothers Big Sisters, the statement said.
She graduated from Northern Arizona University in 2009 and went on to work for humanitarian aid groups in northern India, Palestine and Israel before returning to Arizona to work at an HIV/AIDS clinic and volunteer at a woman’s shelter, it said.
Mueller relocated to the Turkish-Syrian border in December 2012 to help Syrian refugees, working with the Danish Refugee Council and the aid group Support to Life. She was taken by the Islamic State group while leaving a hospital in the northern Syrian city of Aleppo in August 2013.
Her parents said they had previously remained silent about her capture “out of concern for Kayla’s safety,” and to abide by the group’s warnings.
AGING: As of last month, people aged 65 or older accounted for 20.06 percent of the total population and the number of couples who got married fell by 18,685 from 2024 Taiwan has surpassed South Korea as the country least willing to have children, with an annual crude birthrate of 4.62 per 1,000 people, Ministry of the Interior data showed yesterday. The nation was previously ranked the second-lowest country in terms of total fertility rate, or the average number of children a woman has in her lifetime. However, South Korea’s fertility rate began to recover from 2023, with total fertility rate rising from 0.72 and estimated to reach 0.82 to 0.85 by last year, and the crude birthrate projected at 6.7 per 1,000 people. Japan’s crude birthrate was projected to fall below six,
Conflict with Taiwan could leave China with “massive economic disruption, catastrophic military losses, significant social unrest, and devastating sanctions,” a US think tank said in a report released on Monday. The German Marshall Fund released a report titled If China Attacks Taiwan: The Consequences for China of “Minor Conflict” and “Major War” Scenarios. The report details the “massive” economic, military, social and international costs to China in the event of a minor conflict or major war with Taiwan, estimating that the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) could sustain losses of more than half of its active-duty ground forces, including 100,000 troops. Understanding Chinese
SELF-DEFENSE: Tokyo has accelerated its spending goal and its defense minister said the nation needs to discuss whether it should develop nuclear-powered submarines China is ramping up objections to what it sees as Japan’s desire to acquire nuclear weapons, despite Tokyo’s longstanding renunciation of such arms, deepening another fissure in the two neighbors’ increasingly tense ties. In what appears to be a concerted effort, China’s foreign and defense ministries issued statements on Thursday condemning alleged remilitarism efforts by Tokyo. The remarks came as two of the country’s top think tanks jointly issued a 29-page report framing actions by “right-wing forces” in Japan as posing a “serious threat” to world peace. While that report did not define “right-wing forces,” the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs was
US President Donald Trump in an interview with the New York Times published on Thursday said that “it’s up to” Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) what China does on Taiwan, but that he would be “very unhappy” with a change in the “status quo.” “He [Xi] considers it to be a part of China, and that’s up to him what he’s going to be doing, but I’ve expressed to him that I would be very unhappy if he did that, and I don’t think he’ll do that. I hope he doesn’t do that,” Trump said. Trump made the comments in the context
RSS