Leyla Yildizhan (Deniz Firat), Iraq

Kurdish journalist Leyla Yildizhan, who reported under the pseudonym Deniz Firat, and worked for the Firat News Agency (ANF), was killed on Aug. 8 while covering conflicts in the town of Makhmur, south of Erbil, in Iraq. She died after being hit in the chest by mortar shrapnel during an attack by fighters from the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). The attack took place on a camp in Makhmur where families of Turkey’s Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) Kurdish rebels have been living. Firat was embedded with the PKK fighters, who rushed from their mountain base in Qandil to protect the refugee camp from any attacks from the ISIS rebel group.

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