Iraqi social media star Ghufran Sawadi, better known as Umm Fahad, has been shot dead outside her home in Baghdad, the capital of Iraq, on Friday night, according to a CNN report.
CNN reports that the attack happened in the Zayouna area east of Baghdad and the crime was captured by a surveillance camera.
The video which has subsequently been shared on social media shows a gunman riding a motorcycle, attacked and killed the TikTok star on spot by shooting her multiple times.
CNN said it had received confirmation of the authenticity of the video from a police source in Baghdad.
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The country’s Interior Minister announced on Friday that it was “forming a specialized work team to find out the circumstances of the killing of a woman known on social media by unknown assailants.”
Sawadi was popular on TikTok, where she shared videos of herself dancing to pop music in form-fitting clothes.
In the past, these videos were deemed inappropriate by Iraq’s judiciary. Sawadi was sentenced to six months in prison for “the crime of producing and publishing several films and videos containing obscene and indecent language, violating public decency and morals,” an Iraqi judiciary statement said.
Other Iraqi social media personalities have previously been targeted in deadly attacks.
Most recently, another popular Iraqi TikTok personality, Noor Alsaffar, known as Noor BM, was shot dead in Baghdad in September 2023, an Iraqi security source told CNN at the time.
Alsaffar, who had over 370,000 followers across Instagram and TikTok, posted short videos about fashion, hair, and makeup, also often dancing to music.
Following news of the shooting, many posted comments lamenting Alsaffar’s death, though others applauded it, celebrating the man who fired the shot.
Alsaffar’s killing came as Iraq cracked down on LGBTQ expression and moved to criminalize it in law.
Source: CNN
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