ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – Video footage purportedly showing the moment a Turkish diplomat was shot dead in an Erbil restaurant on July 17 has surfaced on social media.
Kurdish security officials are yet to verify the CCTV footage, which appears to have been captured inside the HuQQabaz restaurant in Erbil.
At around 2:30 p.m. on Wednesday, July 17, three gunmen shot dead a Turkish diplomat and two Iraqi Kurdish civilians in a Turkish restaurant in Erbil’s upmarket Empire World complex.
In the video, two casually dressed men are seen seated at a table. One in a red shirt is thought to be the Turkish diplomat.
At a neighboring table in the foreground, a young man with a cropped black beard and a striped shirt appears agitated, drinking water and checking his phone. He abruptly jumps from his seat and shoots the diplomat in the head, grabs the diplomat's bag, and runs for the exit, leaving his own backpack and smartphone behind.
The man sitting with the diplomat runs for cover, drawing his own weapon.
Two other men, one dressed all in black, the other in a white shirt, rush past the table and both fire on the diplomat, who is slumped on the table. At least one of their shots misses the diplomat and shatters a plant trough behind him. They too run for the exit.
All three attackers appear to use pistols fitted with suppressors.
The shooter in the striped shirt is believed to be Mazlum Dag, who was named by the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) as announced on Saturday the arrest of Mazlum Dag, the primary suspect in the case.
Security officials later announced another suspect – Muhammed Biskiz, also known as Dizhwar Mamand Yousif – was also taken into custody for allegedly assisting the assailants.
According to counter-terrorism officials, Dag was born in 1992 in the Kurdish city of Diyarbakir, southeast Turkey.
No group or individual has claimed responsibility for the shooting, which the KRG is treating as a “premeditated terrorist incident”.
