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American killed fighting for Syrian opposition

An American woman has been killed in the country as she fought with opposition forces against President Bashar al-Assad's regime.

Washington: A 33-year-old American woman and convert to Islam, Nicole Mansfield, was killed in Syria fighting with opposition forces in the country's civil war, her family said on Thursday.

"I'm just devastated," the woman's aunt, Monica Mansfield Speelman, told Reuters. She said that the FBI had informed her of the death of her niece, who was from Flint, Michigan on Thursday afternoon.

Mansfield was killed with two other Westerners, including a British man, also understood to be a Muslim convert, in northwest Idlib province near the Turkish border, a monitoring group says.

''They were shot dead during an ambush in the Idlib region and the army found them with maps of military positions,'' said Rami Abdel Rahman, director of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, late on Thursday.

The three had apparently been taking photos of military positions on the road between Harim, near the border with Turkey, and the town of Idlib further south when government troops ambushed them, he added.

The incident happened on Wednesday.

The nationality of the third Westerner was not clear, said Mr Rahman.

Reuters, AFP