MAHABAD, Iran — One of the protesters seriously wounded in the Mahabad clashes two months ago died Monday in Werme’s Imam Khomeini Hospital, a source inside the hospital confirmed to Rudaw. According to the source, who spoke to Rudaw on condition of anonymity, Akam Talaj, 25, was treated at Imam Khomeini Hospital for 53 days and reportedly suffered from serious internal bleeding. Talaj was a student at Mahabad University. He was seriously wounded by regime forces clashing with demonstrators after angry protestors torched a hotel in downtown Mahabad in May. “He was reportedly injured with a Winchester rifle at close distance, hitting him in his neck and chest,” sources inside the hospital previously told Rudaw. Tensions were running high in the ethnically Kurdish Iranian Mahabad, where protesters set fire to the hotel over the unexplained death of a 25-year-old Kurdish woman named Farinaz Khosrawani. After demonstrations, Iranian security officials announced that a number of protesters were lightly wounded and they had all left the hospital after being treated. Thousands of Kurds across the world took to social media to show solidarity with the ill-fated Khosrawani and condemned the official response in Iran. Mahabad was the capital of the first and only independent Kurdish republic established in the aftermath of World War II in 1946.
