Derby Man Killed In Suicide Bombing In Iraq

9 November 2014, 07:13 | Updated: 30 March 2016, 13:50

A man from Derby is believed to have become the second British person to have killed himself in a suicide bombing while fighting in Syria and Iraq.

He's been named in reports as Kabir Ahmed who's originally from Normanton.

It's thought he was involved in a suicide bomb attack in the town of Beiji which is north of the capital Baghdad on Friday.

The 32-year-old has been going under the name of Abu Sumayyah.

Second British Suicide Bomber

It would make Ahmed the second British jihadist suicide bomber, after Abdul Waheed Majeed - a 41-year-old father-of-three from Crawley in West Sussex - blew himself up in February when he drove a lorry laden with explosives into a jail in the Syrian city of Aleppo.

Ahmed's identity was confirmed by Shiraz Maher, from the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation at King's College in London, which monitors social media accounts of alleged jihadists.

Writing on Twitter, Mr Maher wrote: 

'British foreign fighter, Abu Sumayyah, (real name: Kabir Ahmed) from Derby carried out a suicide bombing in Baiji, Iraq, yesterday.

Jailed in 2012 For Homophobic Leaflets

Ahmed was one of three men to be jailed in 2012 for handing out a leaflet calling for gay people to be executed.

Ahmed, with two others, distributed material entitled The Death Penalty? that showed an image of a mannequin hanging from a noose and quoted Islamic texts that said capital punishment was the only way to rid society of homosexuality.

The Foreign Office is now looking into the incident. A spokesman said: 

'We are aware of reports of the death of a British national in Iraq and are looking into them.''