Over 200 from Germany fought with PYD, YPG in Middle East since 2013: German ministry

More than 200 people have left Germany since 2013 to take up arms with the Democratic Union Party (PYD) and its armed wing, the People's Protection Units (YPG), on the battlefields of Syria and Iraq, the German Interior Ministry has said, adding that 69 of them were German passport holders.

Figures released by the ministry do not include any who might have joined the Kurdish Peshmerga in northern Iraq. The figures emerged in the German media on April following a parliamentary question put by the opposition Left Party.

Two German citizens were reported to have been killed in the fight against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), as Germany reportedly had no immediate report about the death of one German citizen.

Of the volunteer militants who left since 2013, 102 have since returned to Germany, including 43 German citizens. Some 12 of them who returned to Germany were also reportedly Turkish citizens. 

The ministry's report also revealed that one Polish citizen, one Iraqi and one Belgian citizen returned to Germany. Some 16 of them who returned to the country had fought with the YPG, according to the ministry.

Meanwhile, Left Party parliamentarian Ulla Jelpke expressed criticism to the German government over the figures on her official website.

"Foreign volunteers who fought alongside the YPG and its allies against ISIL should be welcomed as brave fighters; they should not be criminalized and disgraced," she said.

Jelpke also recalled the death of German citizen Anton Lescheck, 24, who was allegedly killed in Syria's Manbij due to Turkish air strikes on November 2016, stating that the German government and the federal prosecution were avoiding launching an investigation into the death of the...