Police Attempting To Arrest Gunmen Killed in Kurdistan

SULAIMANI, Iraqi Kurdistan: A policeman died last week after he was shot by a group of gunmen when on duty arresting two fighters more than two weeks ago here in the city of Sulaimani in the Iraqi Kurdistan region.

Harem Qasim, an Emergency police, was called on by his superior officer in the late midnight to exercise a duty in the Bakhtyari neighborhood where a personal fight was taking place between two men, according to the Sulaimani Police Station.

As the police team including Qasim, 21, and four other policemen were trying to arrest the fighters, they were shot. All escaped unscathed except Qasim who was critically injured.

Lt. Aso Omar, Public Relations officer of the police station, said that Qasim, who was a driver for the Emergency Police Squad, stayed in his car while the gunmen started shooting the police team, while other policemen had gone in side of a house. 

He was hit by one bullet in his left side and sent to a hospital immediately, but the seriousness of the injury did let him live more than nine days.

“Firstly, his right hand stopped operating. In the first night the doctors took out one of his kidneys and his spleen” said Harem’s sister.

“We have arrested six of them so far. Two of the detainees have admitted that they had opened fire,” said Lt. Omar.  “This has been their second fighting. It’s yet to be clear why they were fighting.”

Such incidents have been relatively common in the South and Center of Iraq. But it has been very rare and almost unprecedented here in the federal region Kurdistan, which has been much safer than the rest of the country.

Qasim, the eldest son of a five-member family, is said to have dropped out from high school in 2007 for poverty and recruited himself as a policeman.

Qasim Sheikh Mahmoud, father, described the killing as an “assaulting on the government”.

“Harem was a government son as was mine,” said Mahmoud. “The killers should receive their fair punishment.”

Colonel Najmadeen Qadir, Chief Police of Sulaimani, told Rudaw that “the two fighters are accused of intentional killing and detained under article 406.”