A Syrian activist and her journalist daughter are reported to have been stabbed to death in their home in the Turkish city of Istanbul, the latest victims of attacks targeting Syrian activists in Turkey.
The bodies of 60-year-old Arouba Barakat and 22-year-old Hala Barakat were discovered late Thursday, the state-run Anadolu Agency reported, when friends worried that the journalist had not showed up for work alerted police.
It is not clear how long the pair were in Turkey, although the country has been home to almost three million Syrian refugees – many of them opponents of the government of Bashar al-Asad – since the outbreak of the Syrian civil war in 2011.
Homicide officers are investigating the latest deaths – there have been four previous killings of Syrian journalists in Turkey, all of which the Islamic State group said it carried out. A fifth journalist survived two attacks.
Arouba Barakat (left) and 22-year-old Hala Barakat (right) were reported by their family members to have been stabbed to death in Istanbul overnight on Thursday
The pair are the latest in a list of Syrian activists taking refuge in Turkey who have been murdered
According to Syrian opposition sources, Arouba (left) was a member of the Syrian National Council while her daughter was a journalist working for an opposition organization
Orouba’s sister, Shaza, said on Facebook they had been stabbed to death ‘by the hand of tyranny and injustice’.
‘Orouba wrote headlines for the front page, and she pursued criminals and exposed them. Her name and her daughter’s name, Halla, are now in the front-page headlines,’ she said.
According to Syrian opposition activists’ pages on social media, Arouba was a member of the Syrian National Council. She had backed the uprising against Syria’s the Syrian president but had also criticized some in the opposition.
She was reported to have been investigating alleged torture in prisons run by the Syrian governmentÂ
Her daughter was a journalist working for the opposition’s Orient news. Earlier this year, she took part in a talk entitled ‘Russia destroyed Syria’.
Some Turkish reports said the women were stabbed. Hurriyet newspaper quoted an unnamed neighbour as saying the women were found with their throats slit.
The media advocacy group, Reporters Without Borders, has called on Turkey’s government to protect Syrian journalists in exile in the country.