Syrian journalist shot in Turkey’s southeast

GAZIANTEP – Anadolu Agency

A Syrian journalist from Syria’s Aleppo, was shot and severely injured in Turkey's southeastern province of Gaziantep on April 10.  

A masked assailant shot Muhammed Zahir al-Sherkat, a 36-year-old Syrian citizen, in the head in Gaziantep’s Değirmiçem neighborhood. 

Al-Sherkat, who was reportedly carrying several maps of certain regions in Syria, was hospitalized and remains in critical condition. 

Police are investigating footage of the incident, which was recorded by the security camera of a nearby grocery store.



The video footage showed the masked suspect approaching al-Sherkat from behind and running away in the same destination he had come from after the attack.  

Similar incidents have occurred in Turkish cities close to the Syrian border. A Syrian activist who produced documentaries hostile to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) was assassinated, according to the group with which he worked, “Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently,” in Gaziantep on Dec. 27, 2015. 

“Film maker Naji Jerf, father of two children, was assassinated... today in Gaziantep” with a silencer-equipped pistol, the group said in a statement on Twitter.

Also, at the end of October 2015, ISIL claimed responsibility for killing journalists Ibrahim Abdelkader and Fares Hamadi. They were found decapitated in a house in Şanlıurfa in southern Turkey.