British YPJ fighter Anna Campbell killed in Afrin

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – A British woman who was fighting with the all-female Kurdish YPJ has been killed during fighting in Afrin. She is the first British woman to die fighting alongside Kurdish forces, and the first foreign volunteer to die in Turkey’s offensive.

Anna Campbell, 26, from Lewes, East Sussex, traveled to Syria in May 2017 to support the Kurds in their fight against ISIS. She is thought to have been killed on March 16 when a convoy she was travelling in was hit by a Turkish bombardment.

Sections of the YPJ, the female wing of the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG), suspended anti-ISIS operations in northern Syria after Turkish forces and their Syrian proxies entered the Kurdish canton on January 20.

Campbell, who was given the nom-de-guerre Helîn Qerecox, is the eighth British citizen to die fighting alongside the Kurds. Her death was confirmed by her father.

 

"She wanted to create a better world and she would do everything in her power to do that," her father Dirk Campbell told the BBC.

"I told her of course that she was putting her life in danger, which she knew full well she was doing.

"I feel I should have done more to persuade her to come back, but she was completely adamant."

 

Turkish troops and their Syrian proxies entered Afrin city center on Sunday morning.

Ankara claims it launched the operation with the aim of creating a buffer zone along Turkey’s southern border, pushing back the YPG, which Turkey says is affiliated with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), a named terrorist organization. The groups deny the link. 

The YPG claimed on Sunday evening that Afrin city has not fallen to Olive Branch forces, insisting its fighters are still resisted advances in districts of the town. They have pledged to launch a guerrilla campaign to push back the “invasion” and halt what they called the “ethnic cleansing” of Afrin.