Father of British woman killed in Syria 'consumed with her loss'
Anna Campbell was killed while serving with the Kurdish Women's Protection Units in the northwestern town of Afrin.
Monday 19 March 2018 23:22, UK
The grieving father of a young woman killed by a Turkish airstrike in Syria has told Sky News how proud he is of his "principled" daughter.
"It's come to the worst. It's what I had been dreading," Dirk Campbell said.
"She wanted a different world, and she knew you couldn't do it by argument. You had to do it, essentially, by fighting fire with fire."
Anna Campbell left Britain last year to join the Kurdish Women's Protection Units (YPJ) - the all-female brigade of the Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG)
She was killed last week in the town of Afrin as Turkish-backed forces battled to take it following a two-month military offensive.
Mr Campbell heard his daughter had been killed on Sunday. Many foreigners join the YPG but Miss Campbell is the first British woman to die for the Kurdish cause.
"I'm desolate. I'm consumed with her loss," Mr Campbell said.
"But what she stood for was important enough to me that I'm sitting here talking to you about it.
"It should mean more to the rest of the world than it has done up to this point."
Former YPG fighter Macer Gifford met Ms Campbell before she went out to Syria in May last year, and told Sky News she was "passionate" and "determined", adding that she had "learned a lot about the Syrian conflict".
Mr Gifford said that despite being told by the Kurds that as a western woman, she would be a target in Afrin, she was determined to go to the front line.
He said she "dyed her hair, cut her hair, came back to them and said 'I'd rather leave now and go home than spend another minute allowing the people of Afrin to be under attack from Turkish-backed jihadists', and in the end they let her go".
Someone else who knew Ms Campbell is former British soldier Daniel, who works as a medic in one of the town's makeshift hospitals.
Speaking to Sky News by phone from Afrin, he said the Kurds needed more help from the international community.
"I think we owe a great deal to these people," he said. "They gave their lives and fought for many years against Islamic State groups that have carried out attacks directly against British people, people in the west."
The United Nations has warned of a humanitarian crisis caused by the Turkish campaign.
Daniel says he saw and treated many injured civilians: children, women and the elderly. He claims they were targeted deliberately by Turkish warplanes.
According to some reports, up to 200,000 people have fled the fighting.