Kayla Mueller Parents Fault World for Late Response to ISIS Terror

The parents of Kayla Mueller, the young human rights activist killed earlier this year after being abducted by Islamic State militants, faulted the international community for its late response to the atrocities committed by the extremist group even as they urged nations to boost their efforts in fighting the ISIS.

"If world had gotten together in 2013 when this group really formed, a lot of these kids would be alive, a lot of these families wouldn't have their homes destroyed," the parents of Mueller said in a statement.

"So there was a lot not done; people just kind of kept thinking it would go away," said Marsha, Mueller's mother as reported by the Catholic News Agency.

The world needs to unite to "bring this to a stop," said Carl, Mueller's father. "It's not [just] the United States, we can't police the world...it's got to be all the countries and they've all got to do brave things," he added.

The couple has founded a non-profit organization to continue providing the service rendered by Mueller who was helping Syrian refugees along the Turkish border with international aid agency Support to Life when she was taken.

The name of the group, "Kayla's Hands," came from the clay hand Kayla gave her mother whom she visited in their family's home in Prescott, Arizona, in May 2013, a couple of months before her abduction.

Marsha recalled holding her daughter's hand while asking her to stay that time. The next morning, Mueller had her mother a clay hand she made and dried in her room, saying, "Mom, you'll always have my hand."

"Some people find God in Church, some people find God in nature, some people find God in love, I find God in suffering," Marsha quoted her daughter as saying.

"I've known for some time what my life's work is: using my hands as tools to relieve suffering," Kayla was quoted as saying.

Mueller and her colleagues were leaving a Doctors Without Borders hospital in Aleppo, Syria, when they were taken in August 2013. She was 26 at that time.

On Feb. 6 this year, ISIS claimed that Mueller was killed in a Jordanian airstrike in Raqqa, Syria.

Four days after, her family confirmed her death after ISIS emailed them three photos of Mueller's body, showing bruises on her face and wearing a black hijab.

Mueller was a political science graduate with minor in international relations. Just two months after finishing college in December 2009, Mueller went to India to work in an orphanage. She later taught English to Tibetan refugees and went on to work in Israel, Palestine, and France, where she had planned to learn French so she could do mission work in Africa.

Her plans changed, however, when she met a Syrian man while returning home from Palestine. The man, inspired by "Kayla's love for people," went back to Syria to help his people and kept in touch with her. Because of that, she decided to serve Syrian refugees instead and work with women whose husbands were either killed, captured, or fighting the Syrian Army.

"That's what she did. She comforted those people and she wanted to be where the suffering was the worst," said her father Carl.

She and her colleagues founded an organization called "Dignity" in Arabic, where women sold homemade baby clothes to raise money for their families.