Sep 22, 2017

A senior Syrian opposition activist and her journalist daughter have been found dead at their apartment in Istanbul, the Dogan news agency reported on Friday.

Friends raised the alarm after being unable to reach Aroubeh Barakat and her daughter Halla Barakat by telephone, the news agency said.

Turkish police then arrived at their apartment in the Uskudar district on the Asian side of Istanbul and found both women dead. Unconfirmed reports said that their throats had been cut.

Since the outbreak of the Syrian civil war in 2011, Turkey has become home to almost three million Syrian refugees, many of them opponents of the regime of President Bashar al-Assad.

Aroubeh Barakat's sister Shaza also confirmed the deaths in a Facebook post, saying the two "were assassinated at the hands of injustice and tyranny". She said that they had been stabbed to death.