Technical failure caused a Jordanian pilot captured by the Islamic State group in Syria to eject after flying at low altitude, activists and a monitoring group said on Friday.
“[Maaz al-Kassasbeh] was flying at a high altitude to start with. He hit the brick factory and then disappeared from sight,” said Obada al-Hussein, an activist from the Islamic State-held town of Raqa, via the Internet.
Raqa is the self-proclaimed “capital” of the Islamic State.
“Then the plane flew back, and this time smoke was coming out of it. I believe there was a technical failure,” Hussein said.
Another activist from the city, Abu Ibrahim, also spoke of a “technical failure.”
“The plane fell in an area called Hamra Ghannam, in the eastern countryside of Raqa,” said Abu Ibrahim, who fled Islamic State persecution in Raqa, but who continues to be well-informed on events there.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights gave a similar account.
“Sources in the area saw the plane flying very low. There was a technical failure. The sources then saw IS [the Islamic State, formerly known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant] members fire heavy machine guns and shoulder-fired missiles at the plane,” Syrian Observatory director Rami Abdel Rahman said. “The pilot ejected, after the technical problem made it impossible for him to return to a higher altitude.”
Another Raqa activist, Nael Mustafa, said: “The pilot was at a low altitude, and then IS fire hit his plane.”
Their accounts came hours after the Jordanian military denied the Islamic State group claims that it shot down one of its warplanes.
The US military also dismissed the group’s claim to have hit the jet with an anti-aircraft missile, saying: “Evidence clearly suggests that ISIL [the Islamic State group] did not down the aircraft.”
The crash was the first warplane from the US-led coalition lost since air strikes on the Islamic State began in Syria in September, and marks a major propaganda victory for the Sunni group.
Jordan is among a number of nations that have joined the air raids against the Islamic State.
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