A nineteen-year-old Egyptian woman was killed by a deliberate gunshot wound, on 3 September by her neighbor Ahmad Fathi Ameirah, 29, after her parents refused his request to marry her, according to a press statement by the Public Prosecution Office.
The victim has been identified as Amani Al-Gazzar, a physical education student.
On 4 September, Egypt’s Ministry of Interior announced that the perpetrator’s corpse was found on the Alexandria-Agricultural Road, and his death was ruled as suicide by gunshot – the same gun used on Al-Gazzar.
“The Prosecutor General general quickly ordered the investigations to end and arrest the accused [who initially fled the scene] along with obtaining his phone and weapon,” reads the statement.
Al-Gazzar was murdered in Birket El-Sabe’, a city in Egypt’s Al-Menoufia governorate, 80 kilometers north of Cairo.
News of her death quickly spread through social media, causing public outrage. Speak Up, an Egyptian feminist initiative with a combined 800 thousand followers on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, was one of the first popular pages to share the news.
Al-Gazzar’s murder reminds Egyptians once more of the increasingly frequent pattern of femicides occurring this year across the country.
Nayera Ashraf’s murder, on 20 June, in front of Mansoura University’s gates – for rejecting the advances of a colleague – was among the first femicides to shock and anger the country.
Her murderer was swiftly given the death penalty.
Two months later, on 9 August, Salma Bahgat was stabbed to death by her ex-boyfriend in front of a Zagazig courthouse for ending their relationship. The murderer was arrested shortly after, but is yet to receive a sentence.
This is a developing story.
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