ERBIL, Kurdistan Region — A female employee of the Kurdistan Region’s Ministry of Electricity was shot dead by her colleague on Monday morning, Erbil police’s spokesperson told reporters. The man is in the custody of security forces and under investigation. The suspected perpetrator, whose name was not revealed to the public, had brought a gun to the ministry and shot his colleague, Shadia Abdullah, who later died at the hospital, according spokesperson for Erbil police Hogir Aziz. He described the attack as resulting from a “social problem”, a popular euphemism for interpersonal or intercommunity conflicts, including those surrounding premarital romantic or sexual relations. The woman’s family denied the police spokesperson and social media’s suggestion of a relationship between the two. According to her uncle, who refused to give his name, the suspect had proposed to Abdullah a year ago, but she had refused and got engaged to someone else just two weeks ago. “If someone proposes and it’s not accepted, do you have to kill them?,” the uncle told Rudaw’s Shahyan Tahsin on Monday. “There are baseless [accusations] on social media. If Shadia had anything with him, she would have married him,” he added. He called on the government to execute the perpetrator inside the ministry, where the murder took place. Abdullah was on a two-day leave from work to prepare for her wedding, which was to take place in the coming week, but had gone back to collect her salary, distribute sweets ahead of her marriage, her uncle says. “We are sad and shocked by the news, it’s a heart-wrenching catastrophe in the ministry,” Omed Mohammed, Spokesperson for the Ministry of Electricity, told Tahsin on Monday, noting that the two employees worked in separate departments of the ministry. The spokesperson added that the ministry had not been notified of any threats from the victim. “It was an issue between them,” he added. Regarding how a weapon entered the ministry unnoticed, the police spokesperson Aziz said employees of an institution don’t get checked when entering government institutions, only visitors. “But we are investigating how he got the weapon and why he brought it in because he had prepared himself and a weapon, and has carried this out in a government institution,” he told reporters outside of the ministry on Monday morning. Article 406 of Iraq’s penal code says “any person who willfully kills another is punishable by death” under a few circumstances, including if the killing is premeditated. Ardalan Shukri, chief of staff at the ministry, who was at the scene, told reporters, “I don’t know how many bullets she was hit with, but two bullet wounds could be seen on her head.” “As far as I'm aware, they had no problems,” he added. According to Aziz, speaking to Rudaw’s Tahsin, investigations are ongoing into the perpetrator, refusing to give further details of the investigation.
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