THE father of a woman who died fighting with Kurdish forces in Syria says he should have done more to stop her.

Dirk Campbell said he will never come to terms with losing his daughter Anna, from Lewes.

The 26-year-old flew to Lebanon and then entered Syria, where she joined an all-woman brigade of the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG).

She fought in the north of the country, and died in March last year.

Mr Campbell said he and other relatives begged Anna not to go to the war-torn country.

Speaking on ITV’s This Morning programme, he said: “One doesn’t really come to terms with a thing like that.

“I should have done more.

“She wouldn’t take no for an answer, she was that tough.

“All members of her family and friends said ‘Please don’t do this, it’s a really bad idea, it’s really dangerous’ but I’d been in enough discussions with her to know when arguing was futile.

“Also, I didn’t want to disrespect her opinion.

“I thought what she was doing was important enough for her that I could support her by feeling proud so that she didn’t feel like she was out on a limb on her own.”

Anna had joined the YPG forces, a total of 50,000 Kurdish men and women, fighting Islamic State terrorists.

But conflict between the Kurds and Turkish forces had flared up in the week of her death.

It is believed she was killed amid Turkish air strikes on Kurdish-held territory.

Turkey’s president Recep Tayyip Erdogan said the country’s military had captured the town centre of Afrin, which was previously controlled by the YPG.

Mr Campbell described his experiences of himself travelling to Syria in a BBC documentary.

He learned Anna kept a diary, and recovered her belongings.

She had written a “day-to-day transcript” of her time with the YPG.

Mr Campbell previously accused the Government of “back-pedalling” amid his attempts to find a way to bring her body home over fears it would be left to rot on the battlefield in Afrin.

He said: “She was an amazing woman.

“Full of life, full of a sort of a sense of importance of what she could contribute to life.

“She was about justice, she was about the moral issues. Very resolute in whatever she decided to do.”

Anna: The Woman Who Went To Fight Isis is now available on BBC iPlayer after its broadcast on Tuesday.