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A 21-year-old man from Oxford, who travelled to the Islamic State-controlled area of Syria in 2014, has said he is now being held by Kurdish forces fighting the group.

Jack Letts, dubbed “Jihadi Jack”, is suspected of going to Syria to fight for so-called Islamic State. But he claims he is opposed to IS and has left their territory.

Speaking about leaving IS territory, Mr Letts said: “I found a smuggler and walked behind him through minefields.” He said he and the smuggler “eventually made it near a Kurdish point where we were shot at twice and slept in a field”. He said he is now in solitary confinement in a jail in Kurdish-held north-east Syria.

Mr Letts converted to Islam while at Cherwell comprehensive school in Oxford. He travelled to Jordan, aged 18, in 2014, having dropped out of his A-levels. By the autumn of that year he was in IS-controlled territory in Syria.

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US-backed Syrian forces have advanced into the western part of so-called Islamic State’s “capital” of Raqqa, they and a monitor report.

The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) said the move had opened up a second front inside the Syrian city. They entered the eastern part earlier this week. Its fighters were engaged in fierce clashes with the jihadists, it said.

The SDF, supported by US-led coalition air strikes, has spent months encircling the city. “The SDF captured the western half of the Al-Sabahiya neighbourhood and are reinforcing their positions there,” the head of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group, Rami Abdel Rahman, told AFP news agency on Saturday. “They then advanced north to the adjacent district of Al-Romaniya and are fighting IS there.”

A statement from the SDF’s Operation Wrath of the Euphrates said its fighters had stormed Al-Romaniya and were locked “in fierce fighting inside the district”.

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Three British men who were detained in Germany after their conversations on board an Easyjet flight sparked alarm have been released without charge.

Their flight from Slovenia to the UK was diverted to Cologne after the pilot was alerted to a “suspicious conversation” with “terrorist content”. “The criminal investigation against them has been halted. No evidence was found,” police said. “We now believe that there was never any real danger.”

All 151 passengers were evacuated from the Airbus 319 aircraft using emergency slides, and nine received medical treatment.

The men, aged 31, 38 and 48, were returning to Stansted, in Essex, from Ljubljana on 10 June when the disruption arose. They are said to have been on a business trip.

According to prosecutors, the flight was diverted when fellow passengers reported the men were discussing “terrorist matters” and carrying a book entitled “Kill” with a sniper rifle on the cover.

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Eight people have been arrested following a march by protesters in central Manchester opposing extremism.

Thousands gathered in the city almost three weeks after suicide bomber Salman Abedi killed 22 people and injured more than 110 at an Ariana Grande concert.

Bottles and flares were thrown as the UK Against Hate group and counter-demonstrators clashed and police said the protest “turned nasty”. Greater Manchester’s mayor said police “deserve better”.

The mayor, Andy Burnham, criticised protesters on Twitter, pointing out that the force was currently handling one of its largest-ever investigations, into the terrorist atrocity.

UK Against Hate said on its website it organised the march to “stand together in Manchester in opposition to hate”. However, some protesters chanted “Our streets” and “You’re not English anymore.”

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A new German study has put at 327 the number of people killed at the East German border during the Cold War.

Most were civilians trying to flee to the West from communist East Germany.

The 327 includes 262 who died at the Berlin Wall, and 24 East German border guards who were shot while on duty.

The study was done by a team at the Free University of Berlin. About half of those who died were aged 18-25. The youngest was a baby who suffocated in the boot of a car in 1977.

Many of the victims were shot by East German guards, drowned trying to swim to the West or set off anti-personnel mines. About 10% of those who died were women. Many of the 327 were young manual workers or farmers.

In 1979 two East German families – the Wetzels and Strelzyks, four adults and four children in total – flew from Thüringia to Bavaria using a secretly made hot-air balloon.

In 1986 East Berliners Karsten Klünder and Dirk Deckert reached Danish waters in the Baltic after setting off on surfboards with home-made sails.

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