Briton killed in Syria ‘taking photos of military positions’
Syrian state TV has named a British man who it says was killed fighting alongside rebel forces in the north western province of Id-Lib.
The man, together with an American woman and another westerner, were said to have died while taking photographs of military positions in Idlib province, near the Turkish border.
Pictures of the bodies and identity cards of a group of Westerners have been broadcast – one has been confirmed as that of an American woman, a 33-year-old Muslim convert from Michigan
The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which opposes Bashar al-Assad‘s regime, has reportedly suggested the trio were working with rebels.
A Foreign Office spokesman said: “We understand that a British national has been killed in Syria. Their family have been informed and we are providing consular assistance.”
Bloodshed
Britain has withdrawn all diplomats from Syria amid the escalating bloodshed.
The 33-year-old Michigan woman and convert to Islam was killed while fighting with opposition forces against the government of President Bashar al-Assad in the country’s civil war, her family said on Thursday.
The woman’s aunt told Reuters that the FBI had informed her on Thursday afternoon of the death of her niece, Nicole Mansfield of Flint, but said she did not have the details of how she died.
“I’m just devastated,” said the aunt, Monica Mansfield Speelman. “Evidently, she was fighting with opposition forces.”
Speelman said Mansfield, a single mother of an 18-year-old daughter, had converted to Islam about five years ago but that she did not know when her niece had traveled to Syria.
Syrian state TV shows pictures of the bullet-ridden car the three “fighters” were travelling in. Reuters/Sana TV
The attack is said to have happened on Wednesday, a week after a British doctor was killed in Idlib province.
Isa Abdur Rahman, 26, a graduate of Imperial College London who had travelled to the country to treat injured civilians, died when a makeshift hospital was shelled.
Fighting has been raging in Syria with the international community still at loggerheads over how to resolve the crisis.
Earlier this week the EU agreed to lift its arms embargo so that Britain and France have the option of supplying weapons to rebel forces.
In an interview with Lebanese TV, Assad has indicated that he is expecting Russia to fulfil a deal for air defence missiles.
He said he was ready “in principle” to attend an international peace conference next month, but added that it would not be surprising if it failed.
