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Kurdish woman kills self in grief over
slain husband, 5 Orphaned
13.8.2007
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August
13, 2007
Kirkuk, Kurdistan region Border with (Iraq),
-- Neighbors rushed to the house of a 34-year-old
Kurdish woman after learning that her husband - a
police officer - was one of three killed in an
ambush Sunday near Kirkuk.
But Layla Ridha Mohammed could not be comforted. She
went inside, grabbed a pistol and shot herself in
the head. The couple's five young children are now
orphans.
"Layla has a strong personality, but she must have
felt undone by this event and not knowing how she
could continue without him,'' said Bahjat Fattah
Mustafa, a police officer and relative of the
deceased. "They are a poor family.''
The suicide was a grim illustration of how tragedies
often compound in a country being ripped apart by
sectarian and other violence.
Mohammed's husband, Muhsin Ali, and two of his
colleagues were killed in a drive-by shooting while
on patrol southwest of Kirkuk, a disputed, oil-rich
Kurdish city lies just south border of the Kurdistan
autonomous region, 180 miles north of Baghdad.
AP.photos afterward show a policeman
collapsed in grief, still wearing a black bulletproof vest over his blue uniform. |
Kurds in Kirkuk: Bayan Mahmoud grieves for her
husband, Mahmoud Saber, a 24-year-old police officer
killed outside Kirkuk, 290 kilometers (180 miles)
north of Baghdad, Iraq on Sunday, Aug. 12, 2007.
Gunmen ambushed a police patrol southwest of the
northern city of Kirkuk, killing three officers and
wounding another, police Brig. Gen. Sarhat Qadir
said. AP |
Nobody has claimed responsibility for the ambush.
Iraqi security forces are frequently targeted by
militants who accuse them of collaborating with
U.S.-led forces and the Iraqi government.
Mohammed's children, ages 5 to 11, are now staying
with an uncle, Mustafa said, promising they would be
well cared for by the extended family in the Kirkuk
suburb of Daqouq.
"We, the policemen, and all the relatives will take
care of the kids,'' he said. "Their father has three
brothers, and his mother and father are still
alive.''
The wives of the other slain officers - Hewa Haweis
and Mahmoud Saber - appeared inconsolable. One fell
into the arms of a female relative. The other tore
at her hair, a child in her lap.
Ahmed Majeed, a 26-year-old living nearby, said
neighbors could not stop Mohammed from killing
herself but managed to keep the children unable to
see the suicide.
"Then their uncle took them to his house,'' he said.
AP
**
Kirkuk city is a Kurdistani city and it lies just
south border of the Kurdistan autonomous region and
it is not under the full control of Kurdistan
Regional Government administration, its population
is a mix of majority Kurds and minority of Arabs,
Turkmen.
The former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein forced
over 250,000 Kurdish residents to give up their
homes to Arabs in the 1970s, to "Arabize" the city
and the region's oil industry.
Based on Iraq's Constitution a referendum is to be
held in late 2007 to decide whether the oil-rich
Kurdish province should be annexed to the safe
semiautonomous Kurdistan region in Iraq's north.
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