On Sunday, December 24th, 2023, an alleged airstrike on the city of Al-Qāmishlī in Al-Hassakah Governorate in northeastern Syria reportedly perpetrated by the Turkish military killed a renowned 39-year-old Kurdish cinematographer, Mansour Karimian.

Some sources provided a different date and place of his death. According to the New York Kurdish Cultural Center, Mansour was killed in a Turkish drone strike on Derik on December 23, 2023. However, based on the information provided by the Center for Documentation of Violations in Northern Syria, Kurd online news reported that he had been killed in Al-Qāmishlī on December 24th, 2023.

Mansour Karimian was a distinguished Kurdish filmmaker originally from Sine (Sînê) in Iranian Kurdistan. According to the sources, he was filming a new documentary near Al-Qāmishlī. Fanar Mahmoud Tami wrote that the late Mansour had previously filmed the two Kurdish films “Tava Sor” and “Evîna Kurdî” as well as several documentaries and song clips.

Anha news reported on the funeral of the famous film director, writing that hundreds of people from Al-Jazira Province accompanied his body to the Semalka crossing to transport him to southern Kurdistan (Başûr), and then to his hometown in the Sunni city of eastern Kurdistan, to be buried there. The news agency and other sources shared pictures of the funeral procession where numerous citizens carried his images.

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