ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - A man suspected of strangling his wife with a wire in Duhok surrendered to the police, a security official said on Tuesday marking the second brutal killing of a woman this week.
A day after a man was arrested for putting an end to his wife's life in neighboring Erbil city, the Kurdistan Region saw the murder of a 28-year-old woman, allegedly by her husband, leaving behind a motherless child.
The incident happened after the couple engaged in a “familial dispute” at home, Duhok police said in a presser.
The victim was later identified as Zhinwar Issa Tazhiki.
A series of women killings has engulfed the Kurdistan Region since the year began. In the first two months of the year, at least 11 women were killed by men they trusted.
Women in the Region are often shot, set ablaze, or stabbed.
On a hot April afternoon, a man was arrested for slitting his wife’s throat in the Kurdish capital. Her body was discarded in front of the city’s emergency hospital.
Suspects of femicides are often arrested but investigations yield little or no result.
So-called honor killings, domestic violence, sex, and gender-based violence remain on the rise in the Kurdistan Region’s patriarchal and conservative community. When committed in families run by tribalism, they often settle matters with their own moral and judicial codes, often involving a large sum of money given as compensation for taking someone’s soul.
Forty-five women were killed in the Kurdistan Region in 2021, up from 25 the previous year, AFP reported in March.
The increase comes despite the Region’s efforts to end gender-based violence and so-called honor killings.
In December, the Region launched an app to tackle violence against women. It also set up a support hotline for victims of violence in 2018, about seven years after the Kurdistan Regional Government passed its Combating Domestic Violence Law, criminalizing domestic violence and equipping the directorate to combat violence by investigating it.
