ERBIL, Kurdistan Region of Iraq - A court in Baghdad on Sunday handed down death sentences to three convicts, including a woman, for murdering a family of eight in Baghdad’s Sadr City earlier this year.
The verdicts were issued by Baghdad's al-Rusafa Criminal Court.
Eight members of a single family, including children were brutally murdered on New Year’s Eve, a crime Baghdad authorities said was driven by financial disputes between the murderers and the murdered.
The tragedy happened when a woman invited Sarah Muhsim to pay her back 18 million Iraqi dinars that she had owed her.
Muhsim had gone to the woman’s house along with her four children. The host and her husband brutally murdered all of them.
After killing the five, the woman and her husband went to her home to kill the remaining two children and their aunt who had stayed at home at the time, according to police.
The shock of the gruesome mass killing befell the Iraqi street and beyond.
The New Year’s Eve incident was not the first of its kind in Iraq, as the country has witnessed many other similar incidents.
Domestic violence is a serious issue in Iraq, despite the constitution categorically rejecting “all forms of violence and abuse in the family”.
Gun ownership is the biggest challenge gripping Iraq and the Kurdistan Region since the toppling of Saddam Hussein in 2003, despite a myriad of efforts from both governments to try and limit the number of illegal guns in the country.
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