Video raises worries of Britons fighting with Syria militants

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Via Reuters: http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/12/20/us-syria-fighters-idUSBRE9BJ1EN20131220

(Reuters) - An Internet video surfaced this week depicting a masked man in Syria with a working-class British accent, urging British Muslims to travel there and join one of the most radical Islamist rebel militias fighting to oust President Bashar al-Assad.

In the three-minute video, the man, wearing a black hood with eyeholes, loads what he says is a Glock 19 pistol with bullets he says come from the Free Syrian Army, a more moderate rebel group supported by the West.

"Where are you when they are slaughtering our children and our fathers?," the man says during the course of a diatribe in which he taunts fellow British Muslims and encourages them to go into battle.

After firing a burst of gunfire into the air, the video ends with the man saying: "I also invite you all over to the land of jihad."

The video, posted on YouTube on December 17 and being studied by Western intelligence agencies, highlights what security officials say is an increasingly large role played in the Syrian conflict by foreign fighters, including Europeans. (here)

U.S. and British officials say the number of British citizens who have traveled to Syria to join anti-government rebels - often the most radical factions - is in the "low hundreds," and that as many as 100 Britons are in Syria fighting with militants at any given time.

More at link.