US fighter killed in clashes with Daesh in Northern Syria

An American fighter has been killed on Friday while fighting alongside forces of the so-called Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in Syria’s northern city of Manbij, according to local sources.

Levi Jonathan was killed in clashes with Daesh militants on Friday, one of the sources told Anadolu Agency, requesting anonymity due to security concerns.

Two commanders of the PYD, the Syrian affiliate of the terrorist PKK organisation, were also killed during the confrontations, the source said.

The SDF is a US-backed coalition of armed groups led by the YPG, the armed wing of the PYD.  In June, a coalition of Kurdish and Arab fighters, backed by US-led coalition planes, launched an offensive to retake Manbij from Daesh. In May, photos of PYD fighters carrying American weapons and American fighters wearing PYD badges went viral on social media websites.

Syria has been locked in a vicious civil war since early 2011, when the Bashar al-Assad regime cracked down on pro-democracy protests – which erupted as part of the “Arab Spring” uprisings – with unexpected ferocity. Since then, more than a quarter of a million people have been killed and more than 10 million displaced across the war-battered country, according to the UN.

The Syrian Center for Policy Research, however, put the death toll from the six-year conflict at more than 470,000 people.