INDIANAPOLIS (AP): Nearly 300 people have gathered in Indianapolis to celebrate the work and pray for the release of an American aid worker threatened with beheading in Syria.
 
The crowd met Wednesday evening on the campus of Butler University, which 26-year-old Abdul-Rahman Kassig of Indianapolis attended from 2011 to 2012.
 
Many in the crowd were members of the local Muslim community and joined the Kassig's parents and others in the crowd in raising hands in prayer as Hazem Bata, executive director of the Plainfield-based Islamic Society of North America, quoted passages from the Quran and urged Kassig's captors to free him.
 
Kassig-was helping victims of the Syrian civil war when he was captured last year. In a video, a militant with the Islamic State group threatened to kill Kassig.