This article originally appeared in Iran International. 

Human rights organizations have documented an increase in deadly shootings by Iran’s security forces targeting Kurdish border couriers transporting goods into Iraq, who are trying to make money to survive.

In 2023, Iran shot at 507 Kurdish people carrying goods from Iraq, and 44 of them were killed, according to human rights organization United for Iran, and since the start of this year 111 Kurds have been shot at the border for that same reason.

The Kurdish border couriers, known in Kurdish and Farsi as Kolbars, have limited access to justice, said Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam, the director of Norway-based Iran Human rights.

“When the guards see them, they shoot at them. We hear about people who have been killed, but there are also people who have lost their limbs. They get paralyzed because of spinal cord injury,” said Amiry-Moghaddam.

Many of them are boys as young as 13, but others are highly educated men and women, and some as old as 77 years of age, who rely on carrying a heavy load of goods through dangerous, mountainous terrain as a means of survival, said Shaghayegh Norouzi from United for Iran.

“You can find doctors that they are just finished their education and they came back from Tehran and they cannot work in Kurdistan,” Norouzi told Iran International.

Read more on Iran International.