The local administration of Kirkuk changes the way it deals with stray dogs; stops the shooting to death campaign and gives them shelter, yet advocates say their shelter is in such bad condition that many of them die for lack of staff and support.
Up until mid-January 2025, social media was full of scenes of dogs being killed in Kirkuk, citing ongoing protests against the increase in the number of dogs in neighborhoods and threatening the lives of children. However, killing camping has been stopped and guns were put down.
“Now the use of (real) bullets and killing dogs has stopped by the governor’s decision, and after a child died due to dog attacks, we launched a campaign to kill dogs,” said Ammar Majid, the head of the city’s organizing committee.
Dog execution squads roamed the streets of several neighborhoods in the multi-ethnic, oil-rich city of Kirkuk in search of stray dogs, killing them in front of people, including children, and then dragging their bloody bodies to a pickup truck to bury them elsewhere.
The scenes of the campaign come days after the death of eight-year-old Aland Ayman Ramzi, who was attacked by a dog on December 11 in the Jiwan City neighborhood east of Kirkuk.
Ayman Ramzi, the father of the child, told KirkukNow, “Although my son died from a dog attack, I am not in favor of killing dogs, and this is not the solution.”
Although my son died from a dog attack, I am not in favor of killing dogs
Aland was a third-grade student, during school and after exams, he and his friends were playing 400 meters from the school near a sewage pit next to a number of stray dogs.
“The dogs attacked him, gassed him and dragged him through the dust,” Ayman said. He blamed the school, the bus driver and a guard at the housing project.
“He neglected him. His exams were over and he left the school gate. The bus driver grabbed him and left him outside the school for a while and went, instead of putting him on the bus and monitoring him.”
Security forces arrested the suspects for investigation, but the controversy and repercussions, especially on social media, are still viral, and the incident is a motive for demanding a solution to the problem of stray dogs in the neighborhoods.
Dara Shafiq, a resident of the Shoraw neighborhood in Kirkuk, said that eight dogs sometimes gather in the street or neighborhood, and neither children nor adults dare to move.
He agrees the issue is to be addressed but rejects shooting to death.
“I have been taking care of one dog in a park of Shoraw. Later it gave birth to a small puppy, but a committee came and killed it. I was so upset.”
He pointed out that dogs have attacked passersby several times in his neighborhood, so he believes that it is necessary for the city administration to find appropriate solutions, such as opening a suitable shelter to collect the dogs and then sterilize them surgically.
Video: Kirkuk Administration Campaign to Eliminate Stray Dogs, January 2025
Beside killing nor expelling, there are other options; sterilizing stray dogs is a suitable solution for many animal advocates and activists in the field of animal rights, but there are many who support opening a large shelter for them.
There is a shelter for stray dogs in Kirkuk, but it not a better optiopn compared to shooting campaign due to the challenges it is facing: dogs die every day from cold, heat, disease and hunger.
Nurjan Suad, 42, a graduate of the Faculty of Islamic Sharia, is the director of the shelter and an animal lover. She does this as a volunteer because she is a civil servant.
In 2018, donors gave her a plot of land and she opened the shelter to collect injured and stray dogs, treat them and care for them, then he will submit the case to the regional administration.
“Every time puppies die from the cold winter, 15 dogs died couple of days ago, and in less than a year, 350 puppies died from the cold,” Suad bitterly said. She takes care of 400 dogs and 200 puppies at the moment
The shelter can only accommodate 1,000 dogs, while the number of stray dogs in the city is about 4,000, according to Suad’s team.
Over the past three years, the issue of stray dogs has been discussed several times in official meetings of the local administration and various decisions have been made, but the issue remains unresolved.
Every time, puppies die of cold in the shelter
“Fortunately, we have a shelter, and stray dogs have to be taken to the shelter so they don’t harm people, because there are so many of them in every neighborhood and place, and they attack citizens every day,” said Shikofa Mohammed, an environmental activist in Kirkuk. She alsom complained because “it’s small and can’t accommodate so many dogs.”
Mohammed voluntarily planted 350 trees in the shelter at the request of the governor’s office, but the dogs destroyed them all and they were not green.
The elimination of stray dogs has drawn heavy criticism from animal rights groups, who have called for other measures, including rounding up stray dogs and animals in a separate area away from human habitation.
“We have managed to catch between 600 to 700 dogs and take them to the shelter. We can’t kill all the dogs because there are harmless dogs,” Kirkuk mayoralty official said.
Under the 2013 Animal Health Law, a committee will be formed in each Iraqi province with the help of security forces to eradicate stray dogs.
“We need workers, injection guns, veterinarians and vehicles. We have asked for a veterinarian several times to help us, but they do not respond. We only have one,” said Majeed, head of organizing committee in Kirkuk’s central district. They have only fopur workers and one vehicle while they need six additional workers and vehicles to collect the stray dogs.
According to a statement issued by Kirkuk Veterinary Hospital, a veterinary committee has been formed to visit the shelter twice a week.
The director of the stray dog shelter says that she serves the shelter alone, and sometimes with the help of activists and civil society organizations, she spends from his own pocket on the stray dogs. She even transports water to the shelter in tankers because the well is acidic, and dogs do not drink that water.
Suad is still not sure if the shelter is official and belongs to the local administration, because "no doctors or veterinary offices helped me, I need their help to sterilize our dogs, but they did not do it."
The local administration has pledged and promised, yes she is still waiting for a response and implementation.
In 2017, 2018 and 2020, the Kirkuk administration killed more than 3,000 dogs in several operations.
"The committee says they killed 400 dogs, but I am sure and I got data that they killed 2,600 dogs. Even people themselves started killing dogs and feeding them medicine in the neighborhoods," Suad recalls.
There are a number of diseases that can be transmitted to humans by dogs, including cyst and rabies, and in some cases they are fatal.
Veterinarian Abbas Khalid told KirkukNow that “dogs carry a number of diseases that can be transmitted to humans, the most dangerous of which is rabies, which has no cure if it bites someone early, and if you don’t help immediately, it will, it will kill him.”
Some dogs in many neighborhoods have skin diseases which is dangerous, he added.
“The eradication of dogs should be properly reduced because they have created an ecological balance, and they should not be killed continuously. Their numbers should be reduced and a good shelter should be opened to contain them.”
