UoL student killed fighting in Syria

A man believed to be a student at the University of Liverpool has been killed while fighting in Syria.

Anil Khalil Raoufi, who went by the name Abu Layth, was believed to be enrolled as a Mechanical Engineering student at UoL.

A house in Manchester linked to Raoufi is being searched by Police

He died fighting with rebels in the North of the country.

Like many Syrian jihadis, Raofi regularly tweeted and blogged from the front line. His Facebook profile has now been removed, but listed him as a UoL student.

Raoufi, 20, was believed to be a Mechanical Engineering student at UoL

His profiles give “updates from the frontline”,  and his blog is titled “A guiding book, given victory by the sword”. On both, he described himself as a ‘mujahideen’, a term used to describe those who fight under the name of Islam.

A house linked to him in Manchester is being searched by the North West Counter-Terrorism Unit. He was a resident of the city, and his father, who is believed to have come to the UK from Afghanistan around 10 years ago, owns two restaurants on the city’s ‘Curry Mile’.

Raoufi gave frightening updates detailing his combat experiences, and posted graphic pictures of the death and destruction engulfing the country.

He is one of the more recent victims of a conflict that is believed to have claimed well over 100,000 lives.

Speaking on his blog in January, he wrote: “Obviously going to a land of jihaad has it’s dangers inevitably, if you are going to use that as a reason to tell people not to come then you’re argument is baseless”.

Raoufi regularly posted pictures from the conflict on his Tumblr blog

The University declined to comment on the matter while the Police investigation is still underway.

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