http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/27/world/middleeast/american-fighting-for-isis-is-killed-in-syria.html?smid=fb-share&_r=0American Man Fighting for ISIS Is Killed in Syria
By MICHAEL S. SCHMIDTAUG. 26, 2014
WASHINGTON — A 33-year-old American who was fighting for the militant group the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria was killed in recent days in a battle with a rival group in Syria, a senior American official said on Tuesday.
The authorities identified the man as Douglas McAuthur McCain, of San Diego. According to a human rights group that tracks the conflict in Syria, Mr. McCain was killed in a battle in Marea, a city in northern Syria near the Turkish border.
Mr. McCain had been on a watch list of potential terrorism suspects maintained by the United States government, American officials said. Had Mr. McCain tried to re-enter the country, he would have almost certainly faced an extra level of scrutiny before boarding any commercial airliner bound for the United States, the officials said.
ISIS has been fighting the Free Syrian Army, a rival rebel group backed by the United States, for control of the city. There have been reports in recent days that the Free Syrian Army has seized a number of towns from ISIS and killed several dozen of its fighters, two of whom were Americans.
At least 100 Americans have traveled to Syria to fight for rebel groups, according to senior American officials, but only a few are believed to have died there. In May, Moner Mohammad Abusalha, a 22-year-old Florida man who had traveled to Syria, killed himself in a suicide bomb attack. A year earlier, Nicole Lynn Mansfield, 33, of Flint, Mich., was killed with Syrian rebels in Idlib Province.
Mr. McCain was born in Illinois and went to high school in the Minneapolis area, according to his Facebook page. From 2000 to 2008, he was arrested several times; among the charges he faced were theft and obstructing the legal process.
According to the Facebook page, he traveled to Canada and Sweden in 2013. NBC News first reported Mr. McCain’s death.
