Abubaker Deghayes, who learned of his son's death via Facebook on Monday, stated on Friday that the 18-year-old perished earlier this month after leaving Britain in January, AFP reported.

He further added that his other son, 20-year-old Amer, suffered a bullet wound to his stomach in the battle in which his brother was killed.

Speaking to reporters outside his home in Brighton, in southeast England, Deghayes also explained that he had travelled to Turkey earlier this year to meet two of his sons, Abdullah and 16-year-old Jafar, in an unsuccessful attempt to stop them from joining the foreign-backed insurgents in Syria.

He further said, "His brother, who is also there, is injured. The third brother who is also there is OK. He is fine."

While insisting that his three sons are not terrorists but “martyrs,” the father claimed that they went to Syria “without my consent or his mother's consent,” adding, “I never encouraged them… They went of their own free will.”

He said he has another son named Abdur-Rahman, the twin brother of Abdullah, who is still in Britain.

A British Foreign Office spokeswoman said, "We are aware of the death of a British national and are urgently looking into it."

Around 400 Britons are believed to have gone to Syria over the last two years, authorities believe. Around 20 have reportedly been killed.
It is further believed, the report says, that nearly 250 of them have now returned to the UK.

This is while British intelligence services have expressed concern about the risk of “aspiring jihadists” going to Syria to learn how to fire guns and build bombs before using their training to launch attacks on Britain.

Meanwhile, the uncle of the killed British teenager, Omar Deghayes, was held by the United States as an “enemy combatant” at the notorious Guantanamo military prison and torture camp between 2002 and 2007 after he was arrested in Pakistan.

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