At 11 AM on Friday, August 23, 2024, two female journalists, Hero Baha al-Din and Golestan Tara, were killed and six civilians, including a social media professional and video editor named Rebin Bakr, were injured as a result of an alleged Turkish drone strike on a car carrying a group of media cadres for Sterk TV on the road linking the city of Sulaymaniyah and Sayed Sadiq district (60 km east of Sulaymaniyah), near the village of Tabeh Rash (Tabarsh) and/or Goptapa in the Sayed Sadiq district in Sulaymaniyah, Iraq.

According to Roj News, the car belonged to the “Chatr” (alternatively called Jatar or Jetr) media company which operates Sterk TV and Aryen TV, news channels funded by the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK.), and all the victims were working for this company. They were on a reporting mission in an unmarked car along the Sulaymaniyah-Halabja road near the village of Goptapa when they were hit, Kamal Hamaraza, head of Chatr Multimedia Production Company, told the Committee to Protect Journalists, adding that they were journalists “with no direct or indirect connection to politics or military activities.”

The first reports on the incident by Kurdish security authorities and Kurdistan 24 news said the car was owned by the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) and was carrying a party leader, the driver, and another “fighter”, and that they all died in the strike. As reported by Al Arabi News, the Counter-Terrorism Service in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq (CTS) announced on Friday the killing of a PKK official and two others with him in an attack carried out by a Turkish drone that targeted the car they were in in Sulaymaniyah. The service said in a statement that “at 11 am today (Baghdad time), a Turkish army drone targeted a car carrying a PKK official near the village of Tabarsh in the Sayyid Sadiq district in Sulaymaniyah,” indicating that “the targeting led to the killing of the PKK official, his driver, and his companion, and the car was completely burned.”

However, later in the day, several media sources, including the Washington Post, Rudaw News, and Shafaq News, reported that the strike had hit a car transporting journalists. It is not clear, however, whether two different cars were struck by the Turkish military or only a civilian car with journalists. For example, Rudaw correspondent Sazgar Salah claimed that two cars were targeted, one of which had been hit by a missile.

Journalists Hero Baha al-Din and her colleague Golestan Tara were killed in the attack. There are conflicting reports about their age and origins but sources agreed that Golestan was a Turkish national. The Committee to Protect Journalists said in a post that Golestan Tara was a 40-year-old Turkish journalist and Baha al-Din was a 27-year-old Iraqi video editor. However, Al Qudis news reported that “the two victims are Hero Baha al-Din, 29 years old, from the Kurdistan Region, and Golestan Tara, a resident of northern Kurdistan.”

Another source, ANF News said: “Hero Baha al-Din, who specialized in montage, was a resident of the Sinkaw area in Sulaymaniyah, and dedicated her life to media work in Kurdistan.”

Golestan Tara, from the city of Eleh “Batman” in northern Kurdistan, had been a professional journalist since 2000, and a prominent member of the “Free Media” Foundation, where she cooperated with many media organizations to shed light on the issues of the region, the latest of which was the Jatar company.”

Many sources, including the Committee to Protect Journalists, shared the images of the two victims. Hero Baha’uddin was a young woman pictured dressed in a white sweater and wearing a colorful ribbon in her hair. Golestan Tara was seen in one of the images wearing a red headscarf, a green sweater, and a yellow jacket.

According to PKK media, as reported by Rudaw, six civilians were injured in the deadly attack. Roj News reported that they were also journalists who had been injured “with varying degrees of severity” and were transferred to the hospital.

One of the injured has been named by several media sources including Pfaa.lq news as an Iraqi in charge of digital media and video editor for the Jatar Media Company Rebin Bakr. He was reportedly transferred to a hospital in Sulaymaniyah to receive treatment for his injuries. The Committee to Protect Journalists reported that he was in stable condition after treatment at Shar Hospital in Sulaymaniyah for broken legs and hands, according to Hawzhin Shwan, a Sterk TV reporter and anchor, who spoke to CPJ.

In the images provided by the sources, Rebin is seen as a young well-built man in his late 20s or early 30s with dark hair and dark beard, wearing sunglasses and a grey T-shirt.

Roj News shared an image where the burnt car surrounded by men in military uniforms can be seen.

Institutions including the Kurdistan Journalists Syndicate and the Metro Center publicly condemned the incident. A joint statement by the Kurdistan Journalists Syndicate and the Metro Center sent to Shafaq News Agency said: “We strongly condemn the criminal operation that led to the assassination of the two journalists (Hero Baha’uddin and Golestan Tara) working for Sterk TV, which has a license from the Kurdistan Regional Government.”

It then went on to describe the incident: “A Turkish drone bombed this morning, Friday, August 23, 2024, on the road linking the city of Sulaymaniyah and Sayed Sadiq district (60 km east of Sulaymaniyah), a car carrying a group of media cadres for Sterk TV, which works within the framework of the Jatar Media Company licensed by the Kurdistan Regional Government. The drone bombing also resulted in the car being hit, which resulted in the martyrdom of two journalists (Golestan Tara and Hero Baha’uddin), and (Rebin Bakr), the official in charge of digital media for the Jtar Media Company, was seriously injured in the attack.”

Medya News reported that a commemoration event for the two casualties was held on October 2, 2024, 40 days after their death, at the Chatr production studio in Sulaymaniyah. During the event, colleagues and relatives spoke about the two victims, and the Metro Center also expressed a condolence message.

Where the sources identified the belligerent, all sources attributed the strike to the Turkish military.

The incident occured at approximately 11:00 am local time.