Former Miss Baghdad shot dead by gunmen in Iraq
A 22-year-old Iraqi model, Tara Fares was on Thursday shot dead by gunmen while riding in a vehicle in the Camp Sarah neighborhood in Baghdad.
Fares, popular on social media as a fashionista who boasts 2.7 million followers on Instagram, formerly held the crown as Miss Baghdad. She had also held second position as Miss Iraq.
She was riding in her Porsche convertible in central Baghdad when she was shot dead by her killers who rode on motorcycles. She was reported to have suffered three fatal bullet wounds.
Interior Ministry spokesman Maj. Gen. Saad Maan, told an Iraqi TV station that the young model’s murder was already being probed.
CNN reports that Fares was living in Erbil, but visited her Iraqi father and Lebanese mother in the capital occasionally.
An Instagram post announcing her death to her followers read: “In a treacherous and cowardly incident, Tara Fares Chamoun, is with God. We asked God to accept her with His great mercy.”
An Iraqi satirist who lives in exile in Jordan after having faced death threats, Ahmad al-Basheer, condemned the murder of Fares, who was based in Iraqi Kurdistan and rarely travelled to her native Baghdad.
“Anyone who finds excuses for those who kill a girl just because she had decided to live like most other girls on the planet is an accomplice to her murder,” he wrote.
