Umm Fahad, a well-known Iraqi TikToker, was shot dead outside her Baghdad house

Iraq’s capital city of Baghdad is home to well-known social media personality Ghufran Sawadi, also known as Umm Fahad, who was shot and killed on Friday night.

A Baghdad police source told CNN that the strike happened in the east of Baghdad, in the Zayouna neighborhood.

The source also revealed that a security camera recorded the sad event and posted it to social media.

In the footage, Sawadi was instantly shot and killed by a gunman operating a motorcycle. CNN was informed by a Baghdad police source that the footage was legitimate.

The nation’s interior minister declared on Friday that it was “assembling a specialist task force to investigate the circumstances surrounding the murder of a woman recognized on social media by unidentified attackers.”

Sawadi gained popularity on TikTok by posting videos of herself dancing to mainstream music while wearing skimpy attire. These movies were previously ruled unsuitable by Iraq’s legal system.

An Iraqi judiciary statement stated that Sawadi was given a six-month prison sentence for “the crime of producing and publishing several films and videos containing obscene and indecent language, violating public decency and morals.”

There have already been fatal attacks on other well-known Iraqi social media figures.

Most recently, Noor Alsaffar, also popularly known as Noor BM on TikTok, was shot and killed in Baghdad in September 2023, according to an Iraqi security source who spoke to CNN at the time.

With more than 370,000 Instagram and TikTok followers, Alsaffar shared brief videos on beauty, hair, and fashion—often while dancing to music.

After the incident, some people expressed their regret in comments on social media, while others celebrated the shooter and cheered for Alsaffar’s passing.

Alsaffar was killed at a time when Iraq was clamping down on LGBTQ expression and attempting to make it illegal.