German woman fighting ISIL killed in Syria

A German woman fighting with Kurdish militia has been killed battling the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) in Syria, Kurdish officials have said.

Kurdish Peoples Protection Units spokesman Nawaf Khalil said on Monday that Ivana Hoffmann, 19, died on Saturday while fighting alongside the armed group near the Syrian village of Tel Tamr.

Hoffman is the third foreign national known to be killed fighting with Kurdish forces against ISIL in Syria, according to the Associated Press news agency.

Hoffmann, a member of the Marxist-Leninist Communist Party (MLKP) in Turkey, joined the militia group also known as YPG about six months ago, according to a statement released by the MLKP.

The party statement referred to Hoffmann by her moniker, Avashin Tekoshin, and said she died in pre-dawn clashes with ISIL on March 7.

The party statement did not mention how many other MLKP loyalists have travelled to Syria to fight ISIL.

Hoffmann was born in Germany to South African parents.

The British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said she was the third foreigner fighting alongside Kurdish forces to be killed in Syria’s four-year-old civil war.

A video posted early on Monday morning on a Facebook page memorialising Hoffmann shows a woman with her face covered by a scarf holding a weapon and speaking German.

She refers to Daesh, the Arabic acronym for ISIL, and to Rojava, a Kurdish word that denotes the now largely autonomous areas in north and north-eastern Syria run by Kurds.

“We are here as the MLKP to fight for freedom. Rojava is the beginning. Rojava is hope,” she said.

A German Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, Sawsan Chebli, said she was unaware of reports about Hoffmann’s death.