With ISIS’s brutal murder of Peter Kassig, a 26-year-old American aid worker who dedicated his life to the plight of Syrian refugees, the militant group has one more U.S. citizen remaining in its clutches, according to current and former U.S. officials, as well as individuals involved in efforts to free the Americans. The terror group still holds other captives, including British photojournalist John Cantlie, who has appeared in several videos delivering statements for the IS, likely under duress, and a 26-year-old American woman captured last year in Syria while working for aid groups. The 26-year-old Kassig, who founded an aid group to help Syrians caught in their country's brutal civil war, "was taken from us in an act of pure evil by a terrorist group that the world rightly associates with inhumanity," Obama said in a statement. But the general circumstances of her capture and captivity have been known and widely reported for more than a year now. The group has declared a self-styled Islamic caliphate in areas under its control, which it governs according to its violent interpretation of Shariah law, including massacring rebellious tribes and selling women and children of religious minorities into slavery. IS has previously murdered four Western hostages - British men Alan Henning and David Haines, and US journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff. A parade of knife-wielding ISIS fighters behead 18 captives, described as Syrian military officers and pilots, in a ghoulish display filled with slow-motion effects and ominous music. The latest video did not show the person identified as Mr Kassig being beheaded. Several current and former U.S. officials speculated that Kassig, who converted to Islam while in captivity and adopted the name Abdul Rahman, might have defied his captors by refusing to read their script or even have insisted on reciting passages from the Quran. In a statement Sunday, Kassig’s parents said their son was “fed by a strong desire to use his life to save the lives of others” and that he “was drawn to the camps that are filled with displaced families and to understaffed hospitals inside Syria. And the U.S. has been closing in on ISIS’s leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, though efforts to kill him and his followers have been frustrated by ISIS’s use of encryption to shield its communications from American surveillance efforts. In particular, the FBI told the parents of James Foley, the first American whom ISIS killed on camera, that they could “walk us right up to that point” of paying a ransom but not be directly involved in exchanging funds, Diane Foley, James’s mother, told The Daily Beast last month. Neither his conversion, nor the fact that he was helping refugees when he was captured a year ago, appear to have saved him. The Obama administration has claimed that Tice was held by the Syrian government.
– ISIS has beheaded another hostage, but while the outcome is grimly familiar, analysts say the video revealing the death of Peter Kassig has differences that hint at serious problems for the militant group. Unlike four earlier videos showing the execution of Western hostages, the quality is poor, Kassig is not seen reading a statement, and no other hostage is displayed. Instead, only the American's severed head is shown. Analysts suspect that the threat of airstrikes stopped the militants from being able to film outside for long. "The likeliest possibility is that something went wrong when they were beheading him," an expert at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies tells the New York Times. Another possibility, he says, is that Kassig resisted and the "media-savvy" militants were unable to get the video they wanted. Other analysts speculate that the hostage—who converted to Islam while in captivity—may have chosen to recite quotes from the Koran instead of his captors' script. More: Kassig, a former US Army Ranger, founded an organization to aid refugees from the Syrian civil war. His parents say they are heartbroken by the killing but incredibly proud of his work, the AP reports. He "lost his life as a result of his love for the Syrian people and his desire to ease their suffering," his parents, who live in Indianapolis, said in a statement. The latest ISIS video, which also shows the execution of 18 Syrian captives in "revolting, lingering detail," is also different because it shows the faces of many militants and gives a specific location in Syria, notes BBC security correspondent Frank Gardner. He calls Kassig's execution an "act of desperation" carried out by the group because it is unable to fight back against coalition airstrikes. With Kassig dead, ISIS' only remaining American hostage is a 26-year-old woman, security officials tell the Daily Beast. Like Kassig, she was kidnapped while carrying out aid work. Her name has not been made public and officials say it is significant that she doesn't appear in the group's latest video—and while it's not clear what the militants have planned for her, even ISIS is likely to carefully consider the public reaction to killing a female Western captive on camera.