There’s still no official word on the fate of 26-year-old Kayla Mueller, a humanitarian aid worker from Prescott, who was reportedly killed last week in Syria. As Arizona Public Radio’s Ryan Heinsius reports, the self-declared Islamic State has been holding Mueller hostage since 2013.
Kayla Mueller is the last known American hostage being held by ISIS. The group says she was killed Friday during a Jordanian airstrike. But so far, U.S. intelligence has no proof of that claim. ISIS says Mueller was the sole casualty of the strike and that no militants were killed or injured. This has led Jordanian and U.S. officials to cast doubt on the assertions.
The State Department was aware that Mueller had been taken hostage by ISIS in August 2013. But, they did not release her name out of concern for her safety. Last summer, the extremist group demanded a nearly $7 million ransom for her release.
Mueller is a 2009 graduate of Northern Arizona University. She worked with humanitarian aid organizations before traveling to Turkish-Syrian border to work with refugees of the civil war.
The three other American hostages known to have held by ISIS, including two journalists and an aid worker, were executed in 2014.
