Photo of Canadian volunteer John Gallagher posted on his Facebook page on October 30, 2015. Gallagher, clad in camouflage fatigues and armed with an AK-47 assault rifle with ammunition pouches on his chest, stands on a balcony overlooking a rural area with smoke billowing in the distance.

Photo of Canadian volunteer John Gallagher posted on his Facebook page on October 30, 2015. The picture appears to be taken in north-eastern Syria.
Photo Credit: Courtesy: John Gallagher/Facebook

Tributes flow for Canadian volunteer killed in Syria

 Photo of Canadian volunteer John Gallagher posted on his Facebook page on October 30, 2015. The picture appears to be taken in north-eastern Syria.
Photo of Canadian volunteer John Gallagher posted on his Facebook page on October 30, 2015. The picture appears to be taken in north-eastern Syria. © Courtesy: John Gallagher/Facebook

Tributes are flowing for a Canadian volunteer killed in north-eastern Syria while fighting against Islamic State militants.

Former Calgary resident John Gallagher was killed Wednesday morning when an ISIS fighter detonated an explosive belt on a farm east of al-Hasakah City, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

The 32-year-old Windsor-born man was part of a unit that was fighting to take back a nearby village from ISIS at the time of the blast, said the report by the London-based independent group, which monitors casualties in the conflict.

‘A man of principle’

A message reportedly left on Gallagher’s Facebook page by his mother, Valerie, late Wednesday evening confirmed Gallagher’s death. She wrote that she heard the news from representatives of the Kurdish militia, known as the People’s Defense Units (YPG), which Gallagher had joined in July.

“He thought this was such an important fight and he has always been a man of principle, who believed very strongly in human rights and justice,” she wrote. “I am very, very proud of him and his sisters and I love him very much.” 

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said in a press release that Gallagher, was fighting alongside the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), an anti-ISIS alliance of Kurdish, Arab, Turkmen and Syriac Christian militias.

Gallagher, a former infantryman with the 2nd Battalion of the Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry, who had volunteered with Kurdish forces in northern Iraq in May this year before crossing into Syria in early July, was the subject of a Maclean’s profile in August.

“Been busy here, chasing the enemy from village to village … they never seem to stay put, the little scamps,” he wrote on his Facebook page on October 11. “All is well, spirits are high, my comrades are doing their job like true professionals.”

 Photo of Canadian volunteer John Gallagher posted on his Facebook page on October 30, 2015. The picture appears to be taken in north-eastern Syria.
Photo of Canadian volunteer John Gallagher posted on his Facebook page on October 30, 2015. The picture appears to be taken in north-eastern Syria. © Courtesy: John Gallagher/Facebook
Fighting ‘ultimate evil’

In a long essay posted to his Facebook page on May 6, before he left for the Middle East to join the fight Gallagher explained his reasons for joining the fight against ISIS.

“Like the American Civil War, World War II, and the Cold War, this war is about ideas as much as it is about armies,” Gallagher wrote. “Slavery, fascism, and communism were all bad ideas which required costly sacrifice before they were finally destroyed. In our time, we have a new bad idea: Theocracy.”

Gallagher wrote that just like confronting the Nazi Germany, the world has an obligation to destroy ISIS “with overwhelming, unrelenting force.”

“I’m prepared to give my life in the cause of averting the disaster we are stumbling towards as a civilization,” Gallagher wrote. “A free Kurdistan would be good enough cause for any internationalist, but we are fortunate enough to be able to risk our necks for something more important and more righteous than anything we’ve faced in generations.

“With some fortitude and guts, we can purge the sickness that’s poisoning our society, and come together to defeat this ultimate evil.”

Other Canadians are known to be fighting in the area, but there are no reports of other Canadian casualties.

Islamic State militants and various anti-ISIS militia in this multi-ethnic part of Syria, close to the border with Turkey and Iraq, have been involved in heavy fighting for several months.

In mid-October, 2015, the Kurdish, Arab, Syriac Christian and Turkmen militia formed a unified command and declared a campaign to “liberate” the countryside from ISIS control.

 Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG) fighters take up positions inside a damaged building in Ghwayran neighborhood in Hasaka city, Syria July 22, 2015.
Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) fighters take up positions inside a damaged building in Ghwayran neighborhood in Hasaka city, Syria July 22, 2015. ©  Rodi Said / Reuters
Travel at their own risk

Nicolas Doire, a spokesperson with the Department of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development, said Canadian authorities are aware of reports of the death of a Canadian citizen in Syria.

Canadian consular officials are gathering additional information, Doire said.

“The Government of Canada’s ability to provide consular assistance in all parts of Syria is severely limited,” Doire said.

Foreign Affairs officials also advise against all travel to Syria due to ongoing conflict.

“Commercial means to leave Syria are extremely limited, and DFATD has urged Canadians to leave Syria since November 2011,” Doire wrote. “Canadians travelling to Syria, including those who travel there to join local campaigns to fight alongside any party to the conflict, must do so at their own personal risk.”

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