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Syrian militants seize Jordanian pilot

The U.S. military insisted his fighter jet was not shot down.

AMMAN, Jordan - Islamic State militants captured a Jordanian pilot after his warplane crashed in Syria while carrying out airstrikes Wednesday, making him the first foreign military member to fall into the extremists' hands since an international coalition launched its bombing campaign against the group months ago.

Images of the pilot being pulled out of a lake and hustled away by masked jihadis underscored the risks for the United States and its Arab and European allies in the air campaign.

The capture - and the potential hostage situation - presented a nightmare scenario for Jordan, which vowed to continue its fight against the group that has overrun large parts of Syria and Iraq and beheaded foreign captives.

The cause of the crash was not immediately known, but the U.S. military insisted the plane was not shot down.

"Evidence clearly indicates that ISIL did not down the aircraft as the terrorist organization is claiming," Central Command said in a statement.

U.S. Army Gen. Lloyd J. Austin 3d, who is overseeing all coalition military operations in Iraq and Syria, condemned the pilot's capture, saying in a statement: "We will support efforts to ensure his safe recovery and will not tolerate ISIL's attempts to misrepresent or exploit this unfortunate aircraft crash for their own purposes."

A coalition official, who was not authorized to discuss the episode publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity, said the pilot was in an F-16 fighter and was able to eject.

Jordanian Information Minister Mohammad Momani earlier told the AP that the plane was believed to have been shot down.

The Islamic State is known to have Russian-made Igla antiaircraft missiles. The shoulder-fired weapon has long been in the Syrian and Iraqi government arsenals.

The warplane went down near the northern Syrian city of Raqqa, the de facto IS capital.