Shkoi Kurdistan-
A Kurdish man was arrested in Kirkuk on Monday on suspicion of killing two of his sisters, local police have said.
The unnamed 33-year-old suspected to have shot the two sisters in the residential, predominantly Kurdish neighborhood of Rahimawa on Sunday had a history of drug abuse, Kirkuk police said.
“The reason behind the killings was family feud and the man had a history of drug abuse,” spokesperson to Kirkuk Police Amer Muheidin said on Tuesday.
The forensic autopsy conducted on the two women at the city’s Azadi hospital showed both women had been shot several times, and the body of one had marks that indicated torture and being tied up, a source from the hospital said.
Muheidin also said that the killer was also involved in another murder carried out by his brother last month where his brother killed their uncle.
“However, the brother has not been arrested because he has fled to Erbil,” the spokesperson said.
Gun violence is a common occurrence in both Iraq and the Kurdistan Region. Both are home to multiple black markets where different firearms can be bought, including sniper rifles and machine guns – despite efforts to regulate arms sales.
In the latest incidence of gun violence in the Kurdistan Region, two brothers were killed in Erbil’s Ainkawa neighborhood as a result of a “social feud” on January 27.
Less than two weeks earlier, angry customers opened fire at an Erbil restaurant after being told it was out of food.
In a bid to decrease the number of guns in the hands of the general populace, the Kurdistan Regional Government(KRG) in 2019 gave gun owners six months to register their firearms and give up their heavy weapons.
But the year 2020 saw an increase on the year before in reported gun violence across the Kurdistan Region, Sulaimani police spokesperson Sarkawt Ahmad said late November.
