Brother allegedly kills two sisters in Sulaimani

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - A brother on Thursday allegedly killed two of his sisters in a Sulaimani city neighborhood, a police source said.

“The bodies of two women who are sisters were found in their house,” Sulaimani police spokesperson Sarkawt Ahmed told Rudaw, noting the victims were in their twenties and resided in Bakrajo neighborhood.

An informed source within Sulaimani's police, speaking on condition of anonymity said the two girls “were killed by their brother with a Kalashnikov rifle.”

Security forces have not disclosed the motive behind the incident.

The Kurdistan Region suffers from high rates of gender-based violence, including sexual violence, domestic violence, so-called honor killings, child marriages, and female genital mutilation.

At least 30 women were killed in the Kurdistan Region in 2023, according to the Region’s Combatting Violence against Women Directorate. In 2022, the Region reported its highest femicide rate in years, with at least 44 women killed.

Femicides in the Kurdistan Region are often linked with the terms “social dispute” and “honor killings,” which perpetrators use to justify murdering their mothers, sisters, daughters, or wives.

In December 2021, the Kurdistan Region launched an app to tackle violence against women. It also set up a support hotline for victims of violence in 2018, about seven years after the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) passed its Combating Domestic Violence Law, criminalizing domestic violence and equipping the directorate to combat violence by investigating it.

 

Nzar Jaza contributed to this report.