A 28-year-old Kurdish protester died of gunshot wounds on Saturday, becoming the tenth person killed in more than two months of rallies in Iraq’s northern autonomous region, a doctor said.
“Hardi Farukh, who was wounded by a bullet to the head during demonstrations on April 18 in Sulaimaniyah, died this morning,” said Hawar Naqshabandi, the director of the emergency hospital in Iraqi Kurdistan’s second-biggest city of Sulaimaniyah. Farukh, who was engaged to be married and worked in a publishing house, was the tenth person to die in protests that have raged in the region since mid-February, Naqshabandi added.
The oldest fatality in clashes with security forces was 60-year-old Mohammed Rasheed, who suffered bullet wounds to the chest on February 25 in the town of Qalar in Sulaimaniyah province, while the youngest was 12-year-old Garmeyan Ahmed, shot in the head on the same day in the province’s town of Chamchamal. The demonstrations in Sulaimaniyah were initially against graft, nepotism and a two-party stranglehold over Kurdish politics, and came soon after uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt deposed rulers there. But in recent weeks, protesters have called for a dissolution of the Kurdish regional government, which has spurred authorities to slap a complete ban on rallies.
