A German teenager has become the first western woman killed in battle alongside the Kurdish forces who are fighting Islamic State in Syria.
Ivana Hoffmann, 19, an ardent communist who had pledged to “fight for humanity”, was born in Germany to parents believed to have emigrated from South Africa.
She joined the Marxist Leninist Communist party (MKLP) in Turkey before signing up with the Kurdish People’s Protection Units about three months ago. She is believed to have died defending a barricaded position against a pre-dawn Isis attack on a town in northeast Syria on Saturday; the third western volunteer killed fighting the jihadists this year.
Ms Hoffmann, who adopted the nom de guerre Avashin Tekoshin, left two video clips in which she pledged to defend the Rojava revolution; a reference to the largest Kurdish-held region of Syria. Rojava means west, and the area is considered by Kurds as the western sector of a greater Kurdistan.
She is shown in one of the clips with her face covered in scarves, brandishing a machinegun with a flat desert scene behind her. “Rojava is the beginning. Rojava is hope,” she tells the camera.
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The MKLP said in a statement that Ms Hoffmann died defending the town of Tel Tamer, in a region where residents have been subjected to attacks and abductions by Isis. “Our comrade Avashin had been at the front using her weapons to resist the bloody onslaught of the IS gang,” the party said. “Our comrade Avashin fought to the last bullet.”
It is not known whether Ms Hoffmann had any military training.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said that more than a hundred western fighters had joined the Kurds in Syria, travelling from the US, Britain, France and elsewhere. Many more, however, have joined Isis and other jihadist groups, including about 650 from Germany and at least 600 from the UK, more than 30 of whom are believed to have been killed.
Konstandinos Erik Scurfield, 25, of Royston, South Yorkshire, a former Royal Marine, became the first British fighter killed by Isis in battle on March 3.