Kurdistan's Bardarash security thwarts attempt to smuggle 20 people to Duhok province

ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) – The district commissioner of Bardarash announced on Wednesday the arrest of 20 people who tried to illegally enter the Kurdistan Region’s Duhok province.

Khalil Mahmood, the district commissioner of Bardarash, said in a press conference that security forces had “arrested 20 persons from Iran and the cities of central Iraq who were seeking to sneak into the district” despite a lockdown amid the coronavirus crisis.

In efforts to curb the spread of coronavirus, formally known as COVID-19, the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) has blocked travel and entry between cities in the autonomous region and the rest of the cities in Iraq except for freight deliveries of food and other necessities.

Mahmood noted that of 43 people quarantined in the district, 37 of them left after the end of their quarantine and only six remain. He added that 134 members of the Peshmerga and Iraqi Security Forces have also been placed under quarantine in the district as part of the Ministry of Health’s regulations.

In the past week, Erbil security forces announced that they had foiled several attempts to smuggle people into the city and arrested close to 100 individuals during a strict coronavirus lockdown that restricts such movement of the general population to block the spread of the contagious disease.

As it continues to spread in over 180 countries worldwide, the disease has infected nearly 1.5 million people and killed almost 88,000, according to government-reported data compiled by Johns Hopkins University.

The actual figures could be dramatically higher due to insufficient testing capabilities or underreporting, particularly in countries that have weak health systems. 

Editing by Karzan Sulaivany