ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Iranian border guards shot an 18-year-old porter (Kolbar) dead near the western Kurdistan province’s Mariwan city, a human rights monitor said on Monday, adding that eight Kurdish porters have been injured or killed by Iranian forces since January.
Salah Khoshnamak was shot “at a close range and without warning,” the Norway-based Hengaw Organization said in the report, noting that he “died at the scene.”
Meanwhile, the watchdog’s co-founder, Arsalan Yarahmadi, told Rudaw English that the Iranian border guards have shot eight Kolbars in the first half of this year.
“Four were killed and four others were injured,” he added.
Khoshnamak’s killing came after the Iranian border guards killed the 57-year-old Kurdish porter Wazir Rahimi on Friday.
His daughter, Soma Rahimi, said in a public social media video, “I want to not only be my father's voice, but the voice of all the Kolbars who were killed in silence and secrecy, whom no one talks about.”
Yarahmadi stated at least 25 Kolbars died and 34 others were injured in 2025, a slightly higher figure than the France-based Kurdistan Human Rights Network’s toll of 19 disclosed on Friday.
However, both have attributed the overwhelming majority of the casualties to gunfire from the Iranian security forces, while maintaining cardiac arrest, frostbite, avalanches, and road accidents as additional causes of death.
Kolbars carry untaxed goods such as fabric, tea, coffee, and auto parts on foot across rugged mountains and heavily militarized border between Iran and the Kurdistan Region.
Despite its significantly high risks, the business generates very low wages. Transportation costs for a load of 15 kilograms typically generates 1.5 million tomans, roughly $11.
More than 5,000 Kolbars of Iran's border areas have been given work cards, and their movement is official through the Haji Omaran border crossing in northeast of Erbil. Still, thousands of other Kolbars remain unlicensed and thus facing significant risk to earn a living amid an increasingly worsening economic situation in Iran.
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