(Reuters) – The United States on Tuesday announced plans to increase annual aid to Jordan to $1 billion from $660 million to help it pay for the cost of housing refugees from Iraq and Syria and of fighting Islamic State militants.
An agreement on the aid, which is subject to the approval of the U.S. Congress, was signed before the wide release of a video that appeared to show Islamic State militants burning a captured Jordanian pilot alive.
Jordan is one of a handful of Arab states that have taken part in a U.S.-led air campaign against the Islamic State group, which last year seized swaths of Iraq and Syria. The pilot, Mouath al-Kasaesbeh, was captured in December after his F-16 crashed in territory controlled by the militants in Syria.
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