A doctor rubs ointment on the burns of Jacob, a 16-year-old fighter from the group calling itself Islamic State (IS), in front of a poster of Abdullah Öcalan, leader of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), at a hospital in Al-Hasaka, northern Syria.
The hospital was controlled by the People’s Protection Units (YPG), a Kurdish force opposing IS incursion into a Kurdish region in northeastern Syria. IS, which aims at establishing an Islamic caliphate in the region, was in control of other northern areas around Raqqa and Aleppo. According to YPG militiamen, Jacob was the sole survivor of a YPG ambush on a truck alleged to have been carrying six IS fighters on the city outskirts.