Daily Telegraph: Irish Teenager Killed in Fighting in Syria

Feb 24, 2013

LONDON, (SANA)- In a new evidence on involvement of foreign parties in the crisis in Syria, The Telegraph newspaper revealed that a 16-year-old Muslim teenager from Ireland was killed in Syria fighting along the armed groups.



Hussein Buhidma, spokesman of the Muslim Association, said that Shamseddin Gaidan, who lived near Dublin, died last week.
"He was killed fighting, he was killed in Syria," Buhidma added.



The British newspaper mentioned that Shamseddin moved to Ireland from Libya with his family in 2001 and spent his summer holidays in Libya last year and was supposed to fly back to Ireland via Istanbul in mid-August.



His family raised the alarm when he did not arrive in Dublin. They later learned he had crossed the Turkish border into Syria, it added.
"We don't know where or how he was killed and we don't know where his body might be," the Daily Telegraph quoted Ibrahim Gaidan as saying to the Irish Times.
"We heard nothing from him until one day someone called from Syria saying Shamseddin is here and he is helping the Syrian people," Mr. Gaidan added.
The last Mr Gaidan heard from, The Daily Telegraph said, was a brief phone call some time later during which he entreated his son to return home but Shamseddin refused.



The newspaper pointed out that "it is thought that Shamseddin joined the Syrian rebel forces with a cousin from Libya who had travelled to Syria some time before. The cousin is also believed to have been killed last week."



It also noted that the teenager is "the second person from Ireland to die after joining rebels in Syria. Egyptian-born Hudhaifa El Sayed, 22, from Drogheda, was shot dead in northern Syria in December."