A young woman named Nayera Ashraf was killed in the Egyptian city of Mansoura on Monday, 20 June after a fellow student of Mansoura University violently attacked her with a knife outside the gate of the institution. According to the Egyptian Public Prosecution, the killer has been arrested.
The man, whose name was not reported by any official source, allegedly stabbed Ashraf multiple times upon her descent from a bus bringing her from the city of Mahalla. Eyewitness reports suggest that the killer attempted to flee the scene after the murder, but the surrounding bystanders subdued him and delivered him to the police.
According to acquaintances of the two students, the killer attacked the young woman as an act of revenge after she had refused to marry him.
The Public Prosecution released a statement later in the day of the incident confirming that investigations are ongoing after traces of the victim’s blood were found at the scene and recordings were extracted from surveillance cameras in the area.
The incident sparked uproar across social media platforms with a gruesome video of the event circulating widely along with the hashtags #جامعه_المنصوره (Mansoura University) and #حق_نيرة_أشرف (Justice for Nayera Ashraf).
Among those who spoke out about the murder was Nehad Abo El Komsan, a human rights lawyer specializing in cases of gender-based violence. Appearing in a video on Instagram, she said that “as long as we do not take the complaints of young women seriously, and as long as we say that those fighting for women’s rights are ‘emboldening girls and causing trouble’, this will be the result.”
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In its statement, the Public Prosecution urged citizens not to publish or share the circulating videos of the event, but instead to submit them to authorities, where they are being assessed for the investigation of the crime.
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