Iraqi TikTok star Om Fahad shot dead in Baghdad night attack
Al Jazeera
The influencer, who had hundreds of thousands of followers, had been sentenced to six months in prison last year.
An Iraqi TikTok star, known to hundreds of thousands of online followers as Om Fahad, has been shot dead in a late-night attack outside her home in eastern Baghdad’s Zayouna district.
Surveillance camera footage captured the attack on Friday, showing a lone assailant wearing dark clothing and a helmet getting off a motorcycle, walking towards a black SUV and shooting Om Fahad, who was sitting inside.
The Ministry of Interior said it had set up a team to investigate the circumstances of the killing.
Om Fahad, whose real name is Ghufran Sawadi, was popular on TikTok with nearly half a million followers for sharing videos of herself dancing to pop music.
In February 2023, she had been sentenced to six months in prison by a court that determined her videos contained “indecent speech that undermines modesty and public morality”. Some of her videos generated more than one million views.
