British Chinese volunteer fighting alongside Kurds against ISIS in Syria becomes a weibo hero

Photos of a British Chinese volunteer in the fight against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) have gone viral on mainland social media after he posted photographs of everyday life as an international freedom fighter on his weibo account.

Huang Lei, who goes by the username “LeiG7”, is one of a group of international volunteers that includes military veterans and others with no combat experience, who have travelled to Syria to help Kurdish guerillas according to an report in The Daily Telegraph, a British newspaper.

Huang’s latest post, on May 23, shows photos of him and his teammates holding up an ISIS flag after an apparent victory somewhere in northern Syria.

“An area in Northern Syria was finally liberated from the hands of ISIS!” Huang writes. “I was very lucky to have captured the IS flag! We won, even though it’s only a small place!”

As of Thursday, the entry had been reposted some 20,000 times.

According to his weibo entries, Huang has been stationed near Al-Hasakah in the northeastern corner of the war-torn country for more than three months.