Istanbul: Gunmen shot and badly wounded a prominent Syrian activist and journalist living in southern Turkey, the latest attack on an anti-jihadist refugee from Syria inside the country, reports and fellow campaigners said on Monday.
Ahmad Abdel Qader, 33, was shot multiple times by two people on a motorcycle late Sunday while he was inside a car in the southern Turkish city of Sanliurfa, a major hub for Syrian refugees, Turkey's Dogan news agency reported.
He was shot in the head and then operated on in one of the city's hospitals.
Abdel Qader belonged to a media collective known as Eye on the Homeland in Sanliurfa and was strongly opposed to Islamic State (IS) jihadists who are still present in Syria up to the Turkish border.
Eye on the Homeland said in a statement he had survived a "failed assassination attempt" after unidentified men fired three shots at him and escaped.
"He is now out of surgery and his situation is stable," it added.
His own brother Ibrahim, the former executive director of Eye on the Homeland, and another man, Fares Hamadi, had in October 2015 been found decapitated in a house in Sanliurfa in a crime claimed by IS.
In April this year, Syrian journalist Mohammed Zaher al-Shurqat was killed in the nearby city of Gaziantep in a murder also claimed by IS.
Another Syrian activist who produced documentaries hostile to IS, Naji Jerf, was shot dead in Gaziantep in December in a killing that sparked international concern.
AFP
