IS again uses social media to advance its gruesome campaign

The Islamic State (IS) is again putting the social media to advance its bloody campaign calling for suggestions on Twitter on how to kill the Jordanian pilot captured last week, Indo Asian News Service reported.

An Arabic hashtag translating into "suggest a way to kill the Jordanian pilot" had seen a thousand re-tweets, according to The Independent's report yesterday.

The report said IS supporters had posted on Twitter gruesome photographs and recommendations on how to kill the pilot.

The Jordanian pilot Muath al-Kasaesbeh, also known as Moaz, was taken captive by IS fighters on 24 December.

The group's monthly English language magazine Dabiq published an interview with the pilot last week.

The interview ended with the question: "Do you know what the Islamic State will do with you?" to which Al-Kasaesbeh replies: "Yes... They will kill me..."

Many of the Twitter posts contained graphic embedded images, including photographs of beheadings and of wounded children with one showing a steamroller captioned with a message that translated into "Goodbye Moaz". Another featured a stock picture saying "Nothing better than the axe".

Other messages linked to a video made by a woman who claimed her son died in a coalition airstrike. According to the woman shooting or stabbing the pilot would be "merciful".
Meanwhile, the Islamic State released what it claimed was an interview with al-Kaseasbeh, The Washington Post reported. In the interview he is quoted as saying that a ''heat-seeking missile'' downed his F-16 fighter jet.

Kaseasbeh becomes the first pilot captured from the US-led coalition which is targeting the Islamic State with airstrikes on its strongholds in Syria and Iraq.

Kaseasbeh, a first lieutenant in Jordan's air force, fell captive to the Islamic State on Wednesday near the eastern Syrian city of Raqqa, the Islamic State's de facto capital.

The US denied that his plane was shot down, while Jordanian officials issued contradictory statements on the cause of the incident.

''My plane was struck by a heat-seeking missile. I heard and felt its hit,'' Kaseasbeh is quoted as saying. He said he was forced to eject after the missile damaged his engine and caused the aircraft to ''deviate from its normal flight path,'' according to the magazine.

According to commentators, the IS had coerced captives to participate in its propaganda activities, whether Kaseasbeh had been forced by the group to issue the remarks or whether he made them at all was not clear. The group had beheaded three US nationals and two UK nationals, and had also released videos showing the slaughter of scores of Iraqi and Syrian soldiers.