Seventh Briton is killed helping Kurds in fight against jihadists
A MAN who travelled to Syria to fight Isil has been killed clearing homemade bombs, becoming the seventh Briton to die with Kurdish forces battling the extremists.
Oliver Hall, 24, from Portsmouth, had been trying to make safe booby traps in the recently liberated city of Raqqa when he was caught in a blast on Saturday. He had only joined the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) three months ago and had no previous military experience.
In a video released after his death, he told his friends and family that he had joined the Kurds of his own free will and had known of the “risks and consequences”.
His death underlined the dangers of clearing a city that the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant had rigged with large amounts of explosives, another volunteer said.
Macer Gifford, the pseudonym of a Briton fighting alongside the Usbacked Syrian Democratic Forces, said: “Raqqa is absolutely full of mines. At the moment, they are going through a process of trying to clear them up.”
Mr Hall is the fourth Briton to die since July. Jac Holmes, 24, from Bournemouth, also died clearing mines in Raqqa in October. The YPG said Mr Hall had been taking part in the ongoing “mop-up” operation in Raqqa and he was “martyred as he was trying to defuse a booby trap”.
Doctors Without Borders, the medical charity, said: “There are all kinds of explosive devices among the rubble. The fighting may have stopped, but people are still getting wounded.”