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Iranian Kurd Shot And Killed While Transporting Kulbars

March 23, 2023
1 min read
After the incident, protestors reportedly attacked the Karimabad checkpoint, where Azizi was shot
After the incident, protestors reportedly attacked the Karimabad checkpoint, where Azizi was shot

Iranian security forces have shot and killed a 19-year-old man outside the western Kurdish town of Baneh, near the Iraqi border, the activist HRANA news agency reported.

It cited eyewitnesses as saying that Behzad Azizi was driving a car when he was hit by a bullet shot by Revolutionary Guards at a checkpoint. He later died in hospital.

The car was returning from the Kileh border crossing. It was carrying a group of Kulbars, porters who haul goods on their backs across the borders of Iran and over long distances, mostly in the impoverished, mountainous Kurdish areas adjacent to Iraq.

Video footage showing Azizi’s dead body was widely shared on social media.

After the incident, protestors reportedly attacked the Karimabad checkpoint, where Azizi was shot.

He was a resident of Sheykhan Valley.

According to Hengaw, a Norway-based group that monitors rights violations in Iran's Kurdish regions, at least 161 Kulbars were killed or wounded by security forces in Kermanshah province alone in 2022.

That’s 58 more than the casualties reported during the previous year.

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