ISIS-BATTLING BRITISH HERO KILLED BY MINE
Sniper dies a week after Raqqa freed 400 JIHADIS BACK HERE
®
A BRITISH former IT worker who went to Syria to fight Islamic State has died a week after helping to free Raqqa.
Jac Holmes, 24, originally travelled to fight with the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) in January 2015. Over the next two-and-a-half years he fought with them over three separate periods and regularly posted on social media about the war. But the sniper was killed while clearing mines in Isis’ recently fallen stronghold. His mum Angie Blannin said: “I’m completely heartbroken. I can’t believe he’s gone. I was on the phone to Jac only on Sunday and we talked about how he planned to come home for Christmas now Raqqa is liberated. “Jac was the longeststanding foreign volunteer in the YPG as far as I know and, as a mother, you get used to pushing your fears to the back of your mind. But the longe r he was out there the less I worried. Everyone who knew him said he was good at what he did.” Jac had no previous military experience when he left his IT job in Bournemouth to join the YPG in 2015. In May that year he was shot in the arm as his unit attempted to take control of a village from Isis. After six months, he returned home briefly before going back to Syria in August 2015. He was later detained in Irbil, northern Iraq, on his way home before being eventually freed. He returned for a final time in August last year and in recent months he took part in heavy fighting against Isis. His mum said that he wished to be buried in Syria. She said: “Fighting Isis in Syria was his calling. Now I wish he hadn’t been quite so committed. But it wasn’t my place to stop him.”