The Socialist Women's Union in Europe (SKB) condemned the assassination in Kirkuk of Kurdish woman revolutionary Firyal Silêman Xalid (Zelal Zagros) and stressed that these attacks will not stop the Kurdish women's struggle for freedom.

"Firyal Silêman Xalid, under the name Zelal Zagros, fought for the freedom of women and the Kurdish people for over thirty years. The deadly attack in Kirkuk will not stop the Kurdish women's struggle for freedom." 

The SKB statement continued: "The colonialist fascist Turkish state systematically assassinates Kurdish women revolutionaries. Most recently, Firyal Silêman Xalid was shot dead in the street in front of a school in Kirkuk on Thursday. Born in Amûdê in 1975, the Kurdish woman called herself Zelal Zagros in the freedom movement and had been fighting for the freedom of women and her people for more than thirty years.

She met the Kurdish movement in Rojava in the early 1990s. After spending 15 years in the mountains with the guerrillas, she worked in the Kurdish community in Armenia for eight years. During the Rojava revolution, she returned to her native region to help build grassroots democratic structures. In Tirbespiyê, she contributed to the establishment of communes and councils and helped to strengthen equal relations between Kurdish, Arab and Christian population groups.

Most recently, she was working for the women's movement in South Kurdistan, where she was killed on 18 January. The fatal attack in Kirkuk was another attempt to suppress the Kurdish women's struggle for freedom by any means necessary. Zelal Zagros was a comrade of Evîn Goyî (Emine Kara), who was shot dead in Paris on 23 December 2022.

The fascist, murderous attack in Kirkuk will not stop the Kurdish women's struggle for freedom."