A 19-year-old from Brighton who “dreamed about martyrdom” is believed to be the latest British jihadi to be killed in Syria, having died in the past 48 hours.

Militants in the war-torn country say Khalil al-Britani, whose real name is Ibrahim Kamara, died after a US air strike on Aleppo this week.

Kamara’s mother told the Guardian she felt so numb she had no tears left to cry for her eldest son, whose death she had learned about through social media only a day earlier.

A picture posted on Facebook on Tuesday night appears to show Kamara’s face in an unzipped body bag. Parts of his face are covered in fine sand where he had been bloodied.

The Guardian has not been able to independently verify whether Kamara was killed by a US air strike but if the account is correct, Kamara would be the first British fighter known to have been killed as a result of US air strikes in Syria.

The teenager had travelled out to Syria last February after joining three Brighton brothers to fight for Jabhat al-Nusra, an affiliate group of al-Qaida that has fought against both the forces of the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, and Islamic State militants in the country’s civil war.



Khadijah Kamara, the dead man’s mother, who runs a charity to help victims of war from Sierra Leone, said she knew her eldest son was going to die when she discovered where he was. “I cried when I could not do anything about it. I cried then. What’s left to cry now? He’s gone. I have three other boys, I have to be strong for them.”

Khadijah Kamara on the death of her son in Syria Guardian

Khadijah Kamara said she was so unhappy about his actions that she almost came close to disowning him. “He called me in February, he said: “Mum, I’m in Syria.” I hung up. He rang again and I said: “Don’t ever call me.” But she was persuaded by the police and others to continue to try to talk her son via the internet. He left the UK by stealing his 15-year-old brother’s passport from her bag, and his mother said she could not understand why he was not stopped. “They do not even resemble each other,” she said.

The Kamara family came from Sierra Leone, and arrived in the UK via the Netherlands in 2004. Ibrahim stated on his Facebook page that he had recently studied at Varndean college in Brighton. The college confirmed an Ibrahim Kamara had studied there for a year to resit his GCSE exams.

Khadijah, who manages the charity Strive in the Way of Allah, said she abhorred violence. “I don’t believe that war can solve any problem. I am from Sierra Leone. This charity is because of war and what war does. We are still picking up the pieces.”

She said she was stunned by how fast her son had been radicalised. “It all happened so fast. He was just a normal boy, going to school, playing football. He wasn’t disrespectful. He just met the wrong people.”

She said that others in the community – including the imam at Brighton’s al-Medina mosque – tried to talk to him about his increasingly radical views to no avail. He left the mosque, she said, because he felt they were “picking on him”.

Though she did not know their identities, she branded those who “brainwashed” her son as “cowards”, adding: “They want to get these young kids to do their dirty work for them. I have forgiven him and I have forgiven myself if I have done anything wrong. But for those who have brainwashed him, God will decide on the day of judgment.”

Early on Wednesday fellow Jabhat al-Nusra fighters Amer and Jaffar Deghayes posted on a Facebook page that “Ibraheem” had died. The brothers, also from Brighton, went out to Syria with Ibrahim Kamara in February; the conflict has also claimed the life of their brother Abdullah, 18, in April during an attack in north-west Syria.

Writing next to a picture of Kamara, Amer Deghayes said: “May Allah Accept You Ibraheem Kamara. What an honor, he always use to tell me he wants to catch up with my brother Abdullah.” Jaffar Deghayes, speaking to the Guardian via Facebook said Ibrahim “used to dream about martyrdom. He was always talking about [it] especially when him and my other brother (who is also killed now) were together. They always used to talk about what they want to do in paradise.”

A Swedish fighter using the name Abu Imaad As Sandzaki claimed Kamara had been hit by a US drone in Aleppo while he was sleeping and died at the same time as a well-known Jahbat al-Nusra sniper, Abu Yusuf al-Turki. Sandzaki, who is no longer fighting in Syria, said he discovered Kamara was dead via a phone call from another fighter who was close to Kamara. He said he’d been with Kamara earlier this year in the north-west province of Latakia, as well as at the camp where Kamara is understood to have been killed. Sandzaki said Kamara had told him that he had no intention of returning to the UK. “He said, and I quote: ‘I will never go back to the UK.’”

US military sources confirmed that a series of raids had been carried out on Aleppo to strike the Khorasan group, who they said were in “the final stages of plans to execute major attacks” around the world.

US central command said it conducted eight strikes against the group in the west of Aleppo and that those targets included training camps, an explosives and munitions production facility, a communication building and command and control facilities.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Jabhat al-Nusra fighters were hit.

Numerous postings on social media by jihadis in Syria claim about 50 fighters from Jabhat al-Nusra were killed in the first round of air strikes.

The Foreign Office said it was aware of reports of a British man being killed fighting in the country.