The Jordanian plane that crashed in Syria was not shot down by Islamic State (IS) militants, the US says.
The plane was lost in IS territory on Wednesday morning, and the pilot has been captured.
IS militants said that they shot down the plane with a heat-seeking missile. However, the US says “evidence clearly indicates” that this is not true.
Jordan is one of four Arab states in a US-led coalition that has launched air strikes on IS targets in Syria.
The F-16 fighter jet is the first coalition aircraft to be lost on IS territory since air strikes began in September.
IS fighters have published photographs showing the pilot being captured. They named the pilot as Flight Lieutenant Moaz Youssef al-Kasasbeh.
In a statement, US Central Command (Centcom) said it strongly condemned the actions of IS, and confirmed the group “has taken captive the downed pilot”.
It did not say what could have caused the plane to crash.
However, it said it would not tolerate IS’s “attempts to misrepresent or exploit this unfortunate aircraft crash for their own purposes”.
“Evidence clearly indicates that Isil [IS] did not down the aircraft as the terrorist organisation is claiming,” it added.
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