JORDAN’S King Abdullah II vowed a “relentless” war against Islamic State (IS) on their own territory Wednesday in response to a video published by the hardline group showing a captured Jordanian air force pilot being burned alive in a cage.

    Jordan Wednesday hanged two Iraqi jihadists, one a woman, and vowed to intensify military action against IS.

    “We are waging this war to protect our faith, our values and human principles and our war for their sake will be relentless and will hit them in their own ground,” state television quoted the king as saying during a security meeting.

    Abdullah said the killing of pilot Muath al-Kasaesbeh by IS militants was an act of cowardly terror by a group that had nothing to do with Islam.

    “This (is) cowardly terror by a criminal group that has no relation to Islam ... It’s the duty of all citizens to stand together,” he said yesterday in a short televised appearance.

    In December last year, Abdullah described the fight against IS as akin to a third world war.

    “We have to stand up and say, ‘This is the line that is drawn in the sand,’” the king said in an interview that was broadcast on CBS’s “This Morning” on Dec. 5.

    “It’s clearly a fight between good and evil.”

    “This is a Muslim problem. We need to take ownership of this. We need to stand up and say what is right and what is wrong,” he said.

    “I hope the short-term part of it is going to be the military, the medium term is the security aspect of it. But the long term is going to be the ideological one,” the king said of defeating IS.

    U.S. officials Wednesday said that the United Arab Emirates (UAE) had withdrawn from flying air strikes in the U.S.-led coalition campaign against IS after the Jordanian pilot’s plane went down over Syria in December.

    Jordan, which is part of the U.S.-led alliance, had promised an “earth-shaking response” to the killing of its pilot, al-Kasaesbeh, who was captured after his F-16 crashed.

    Government spokesman Mohammad al-Momani said, “We are talking about a collaborative effort between coalition members to intensify efforts to stop extremism and terrorism to undermine, degrade and eventually finish Daesh.” Daesh is used as a derogatory Arabic term for IS.

    He said it was a continuation of Jordan’s long standing policy in fighting hardline Islamist militants and that Abdullah, who cut short a trip to the United States, headed a meeting with senior security officials Wednesday.

    “All the state’s military and security agencies are developing their options. Jordan’s response will be heard by the world at large but this response on the security and military level will be announced at the appropriate time,” Momani said.

    IS had demanded the release of Sajida al-Rishawi in exchange for a Japanese hostage whom it later beheaded. Sentenced to death for her role in a 2005 suicide bomb attack in Amman, Rishawi was executed at dawn.

    Jordan also executed a senior al-Qaida prisoner, Ziyad Karboli, an Iraqi man who was sentenced to death in 2008. The Jordanian pilot was the first from the coalition known to have been captured and killed by IS.

    Jordan is a major U.S. ally in the fight against hardline Islamist groups and hosted U.S. troops during operations that led to the invasion of Iraq in 2003. It is home to hundreds of U.S. military trainers bolstering defences at the Syrian and Iraqi borders, and is determined to keep the jihadists in Syria away from its frontier.

    The fate of al-Kasaesbeh, a member of a large tribe that forms the backbone of support for the country’s Hashemite monarchy, has gripped Jordan for weeks.

    But Jordan’s role in the war against IS has so far enjoyed little support at home. Jordanians worried by instability at their borders have expressed fears that it might lead to Islamist attacks in their country.

    The criticism has even extended to Abdullah’s core tribal constituency, with members of al-Kasaesbeh’s tribe protesting against the government last week.

    Critics have questioned whether the U.S.-led campaign is really their fight, unconvinced by Abdullah’s argument that IS is a threat to both Jordan and to Islam.

    Jordan’s authorities have not commented on how many missions the air force has carried out against Islamic State.

    Muslim clerics across the Middle East, even those sympathetic to the jihadist cause, also expressed outrage, saying such a form of killing was considered despicable by Islam.

    U.S. President Barack Obama’s nominee for defense secretary Ashton Carter on Wednesday vowed to understand and resolve reported delays in U.S. arms sales to Jordan.

    Obama has sought to attract a broad coalition, drawing on as many regional countries as possible, to avoid the appearance that the campaign is just an endeavor involving Western powers.

    The U.S. officials who said the UAE had withdrawn from the air campaign spoke on condition of anonymity. “I can confirm that UAE suspended air strikes shortly after the Jordanian pilot’s plane went down, but let me be clear that UAE continues to be an important and valuable partner that is contributing to the coalition,” one official said.

    There was widespread shock and anger across Jordan at the brutality of the pilot’s killing, which drew international condemnation.

    The European Union combined a statement of solidarity with Jordan over the killing of the pilots with criticism of its immediate execution of two Iraqi jihadists.

    Al-Kasaesbeh’s father said the two executions were not enough and urged the government to do more to avenge his death.

    “I want the state to get revenge for my son’s blood through more executions of those people who follow this criminal group that shares nothing with Islam,” Safi al-Kasaesbeh said.

    IS has seized large areas of Iraq and Syria, Jordan’s neighbors to the north and east.

    The prisoners were executed in Swaqa prison, 70 km (45 miles) south of Amman, just before dawn, a security source who was familiar with the case said. “They were both calm and showed no emotions and just prayed,” he added without elaborating.

    Rishawi, in her mid-forties, was part of an al-Qaida network that targeted three Amman hotels in suicide bombings in 2005. She was meant to die in one of the attacks — the worst in Jordan’s history — but her suicide bomb belt did not go off.

    Only two other prisoners are on death row in Jordan — Mohammad Hassan al-Sahli, a Syrian who was convicted of plotting and executing a rocket attack in August 2005 against a U.S. navy vessel and the Israeli port city of Eilat, and Jordanian Muamar Jaghbeer, a leading al-Qaida operative.

    There are at least 250 Islamist militants in prison, almost half of them were arrested in the past year and are IS sympathisers.

    Jordan said Tuesday the pilot had been killed a month ago. The government had been picking up intelligence for weeks that the pilot was killed some time ago, a source close to the government said.

    The Syrian government condemned the killing and urged Jordan to cooperate with it in a fight against IS and the al-Qaida-linked Nusra Front in Syria. The United States has ruled out Syria as a partner in the campaign against IS, describing Syria President Bashar al-Assad as part of the problem.(SD-Agencies)