An Qatari mission began to seek the remains of the American hostages killed by the Islamic State in Syria ten years ago, said two informed sources of the mission, relaxing a long -standing effort to recover their bodies.
The Islamic State, which controlled the expanses of Syria and Iraq at the top of its power from 2014 to 2017, beheaded many people in captivity, including Western hostages, and has published videos of murders.
Qatar’s research and international research group began research on Wednesday, accompanied by several Americans, said sources. The group, deployed by Doha in earthquake areas in Morocco and Turkey in recent years, has so far found the remains of three bodies, according to sources.
One of the sources – a Syrian security source – said that the remains had not yet been identified. The second source said that it was not clear how long the mission would last.
The US State Department had no immediate comments.
The Qatari mission is underway while Trump visits the Middle East
The Qatari mission begins as US President Donald Trump is preparing to visit Doha and other Arab Allies in the Gulf next week and as a power in power in Syria, close allies of Qatar, ask American sanctions.
The Syrian source said that the initial objective of the mission was to seek the body of the aid Peter Kassig, which was beheaded by the Islamic State in 2014 in Dabiq in northern Syria. The second source said that Kassig’s remains were one of those they hoped to find.
American journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff were among the other Western hostages killed by the Islamic State. Their death was confirmed in 2014.
Kayla Mueller, a worker of the United States, was also killed in captivity of the Islamic State. She has been raped several times by Islamic Head of State Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi before his death, US officials said. His death was confirmed in 2015.
“We are grateful to all those who take this task and risk their lives in certain circumstances to try to find the bodies of Jim and other hostages,” said Diane Foley, James Foley’s mother. “We thank everyone involved in this effort.”
Families of other hostages, contacted via the Committee to protect journalists, did not immediately respond to a request for comments.
The jihadists were finally chased from their caliphate self-proclaimed by a coalition led by the United States and other forces.
Plans for the Qatari mission were discussed during a visit to Washington in April by Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed Bin Abdulrahman Al Thani and the Minister of State for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Mohammed Al Khulafi – a trip also designed to prepare for Trump’s visit to Qatar, one of the sources.
Another person familiar with the issue said that there had been a long -standing commitment to successive American administrations to find the remains of murdered Americans, and that there had been several “efforts with American fields in the field in Syria to search for very specific areas”.
The person has not developed. But the United States had hundreds of soldiers deployed in northeast Syria who continued to continue the remains of the Islamic State.
The person said that the remains of Kassig, Sotloff and Foley were most likely in the same general area, and that Dabiq had been one of the “central centers” of the Islamic State – a reference to their propaganda value as a place named in an Islamic prophecy.
The case of Mueller differs in that it was in the custody of Baghdadi, said the person.
Two members of the Islamic State, both former British citizens who were part of a cell that beheads of American hostages, purge prison sentences in perpetuity in the United States.
Syrian acting president Ahmed Al-Sharaa, who seized the power of Bashar al-Assad in December, fought the Islamic State when he was the commander of another jihadist faction-the Nusra front linked to Al-Qaeda-during the Syrian war.
Sharaa broke the links with Al-Qaeda in 2016.
