People's Protection Units

GoPro HD footage: British YPG fighter in action against ISIS in Syria

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• published: 02 May 2016
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Fighting alongside Kurds. Out of pitch darkness, a searchlight gleamed into life and Joe Akerman realised he was in unimaginable danger. The light was fixed to the front of an armour-plated Islamic State ‘suicide truck’ carrying ten tons of explosives – and speeding across rocky scrubland straight towards him. Some months earlier the 37-year-old roofer, angry and frustrated by the horrifying events unfolding in Syria, had volunteered to travel to the war-torn country to fight alongside the Kurds against the ISIS terror group. Until then, the greatest peril Joe had encountered came when he was replacing roof tiles on blustery days in his home town of Halifax, West Yorkshire. Now he found himself with a specialist Kurdish unit – called Sabotage – operating behind enemy lines on a freezing night in December and being ‘hunted like wild animals’. Joe recalled: ‘We were sent out to blow up a road near the city of Al-Hawl. I saw the searchlight from some distance away and, like the others, I ran for my life. We knew it was an ISIS truck. This was a tactic they were using more frequently. Their aim is to drive into you and detonate.’ Joe, his commander and two others scattered. ‘We were running towards mounds and rocks, anything that would make it difficult for the truck to follow,’ he said. ‘My heart was pounding. It was getting closer and closer.’ With seconds to spare, help came from above. Behind him came a shattering explosion. His pursuer, only about 450ft away, had been hit by an air strike. Joe said: ‘The relief was immense. Of all the things I faced out there, the suicide trucks were the worst.’ Last week Joe, a former squaddie, and Jack Holmes, 23, an IT worker from Bournemouth with no military training, flew home after more than a year fighting with the Kurdish People’s Protection Units, or YPG, the militia whose actions in north-eastern Syria have been supported by US-led coalition air strikes. Read more: http://dailym.ai/24dmHEv