A 36-year-old Massachusetts man died last week in Syria while fighting against Islamic State forces, a Kurdish militia group reported Wednesday.
The U.S. State Department confirmed the death of Keith Broomfield but provided no details, NBC News said. He is apparently the first American to die fighting beside Kurds seeking to drive the Islamist extremists from Kurdish regions in northern Syria and Iraq.
Broomfield joined the YPG, the armed wing of the Kurdish Democratic Union Party, in late February and was killed during a June 3 battle in Qentere, Syria, near Kobani, said Nasser Haji, an official with the Kurdish forces, known as People's Protection Units.
Broomfield's mother, Donna, told NBC her son had "turned his life over to the Lord decided this was God's will" that he should go fight the Islamic State.
"I didn't want him to go, but I didn't have a choice in the matter," she said in a tearful phone interview from Westminster, Mass.
After receiving some text from him after he first arrived, she said she had heard nothing recently.
Now, "I'm waiting for his body to come back."
On Twitter, Kurds hailed Broomfield as an "American Hero" who was "martyred."
Several other Americans are also believed to be fighting with the YPG. At least three other Westerners have been killed fighting with the Kurds, including men from Britain and Australian, and a woman from Germany.
Aided by U.S.-led coalition airstrikes, Kurdish YPG fighters in Syria have driven Islamic State forces from Kobani and hundreds of villages around the border with Turkey, where several hundred thousand refugees have fled. YPG forces have been battling to retake the border town of Tal Abyad, which provides a direct link to Raqqa, the Islamic State's capital in Syria.
