File Photo: This undated handout photo obtained February 6, 2015, courtesy of the Mueller family and the office of US Senator John McCain shows 26-year-old Kayla Mueller. (Agence France-Presse)
The parents of Kayla Mueller, the American aid worker abducted in 2013 by the Islamic State, issued a statement on Tuesday confirming her death, four days after the militant group claimed she had been killed in a Jordanian airstrike.
The family, which had publicly maintained hope that she was still alive, did not indicate how they knew of their daughter's death. The White House also confirmed the death in a separate statement but also did not provide further details.
"We are heartbroken to share that we've received confirmation that Kayla Jean Mueller, has lost her life," Kayla's parents, Carl and Marsha Mueller, said in a statement released from their home in Prescott, Arizona. "We are so proud of the person Kayla was and the work that she did while she was here with us. She lived with purpose."
Questions remain over whether Kayla Mueller, 26, the last known U.S. hostage of the Islamic State, was indeed killed in northern Syria last Friday in the rubble of a collapsed building that the group said had been destroyed in a Jordanian airstrike.
A family representative said the Muellers had received a message from their daughter's captors over the weekend containing "additional information which the intelligence community authenticated and deemed credible." The representative, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, declined to give more details.
Mueller, who had been working in Turkey for several aid organizations dedicated to helping refugees from Syria's civil war, drove into Syria on Aug. 3, 2013, and was abducted a day later.
She appears to have driven in with a Syrian man, who has been described as her boyfriend and who had been hired as a contractor to repair an Internet connection at the Doctors Without Borders compound in the war-struck city of Aleppo.
Employees of Doctors Without Borders, an international medical charity, said they had been surprised to see Mueller arrive alongside the contractor. At the time, Western employees of international aid groups were restricting their travel into Syria because of the heightened risks of kidnapping.
The pair stayed overnight at the Doctors Without Borders compound, and were kidnapped the next day, Aug. 4, on their way to the Aleppo bus depot for their return journey to Turkey, according to a statement issued by the volunteer group. Mueller's companion was released after several months and has declined to comment.
In a letter to her family smuggled out of Syria, which the Muellers shared for the first time, Mueller wrote that she had not been mistreated, unlike several of the U.S. and European hostages who are known to have been tortured, including by waterboarding.
"Everyone, if you are receiving this letter it means I am still detained but my cellmates (starting from 11/2/2014) have been released," she wrote in the undated letter. "Please know that I am in a safe location, completely unharmed healthy (put on weight in fact); I have been treated w/utmost respect kindness."
© 2015 New York Times News Service