On a late evening, two brothers and their cousin from Shawgér drive to a remote region near the village of Tulki to look for some lost animals. They suddenly come under a hail of bullets, all three get killed. Their car was set on fire with their bodies inside it.
The attack took place on the evening of 17 October in an area called Shékh Bizéni in Shwan subdistrict, northeast of Kirkuk City.
The three were the brothers Aram and Haréz Mustafa Muhammad and their cousin Péshawa Abdulrahman.
Mustafa Muhammad, the father of the two, told KirkukNow: “At 4 o’clock in the afternoon, they had gone to look for two sheep that had gone missing. The region is stable and I wasn’t worried. But after nearly three hours, they still hadn’t returned and their phones were shut down. That’s why we started looking for them.”
After a long search and failing to find them, the security forces in the region were informed.
Aram was married and has three children. Haréz was married only for one month. And Péshawa was unmarried.
At around 20:00 Mustafa gets a phone call from one of his relatives, in which he tells him that the three men were killed.
“We don’t have social conflicts with anyone. It is not clear, whether it was terrorism or an act robbery,” said Mustafa.
We don’t have social conflicts with anyone. It is not clear, whether it was terrorism or an act robbery
According to police investigation, the assailants used M4 rifles and the car had traces of six shots.
The area is rugged and is under the control of Peshmerga forces.
“We suspect it to be terrorism,” Mustafa added.
The bodies of the three victims were sent for autopsy and were then taken back to be buried in Shawgér on 18 October.
Hérish Mustafa, a brother of Aram and Haréz, told KirkukNow during their burial: “We were busy with our work. We didn’t have any conflict with anyone. We are devastated.”
Aram was a member of the Peshmerga Forces. Haréz was a farmer working with his father.
Hérish added: “They weren’t armed, because we thought wolves had eaten the sheep. When we found them, we saw their corpses burnt completely.”
They weren’t armed, because we thought wolves had eaten the sheep
He stressed that judging by the position of the car, they had attempted to flee, “the front door of the car was open. Aram was driving it. The handbrake was pulled up.”
