A 17-year-old cross-border porter was shot on Friday by Iran's border guards on the Iraqi border, suffering severe injuries to his face and eyes.

According to the Hengaw Organization for Human Rights, the young boy was taken to hospital for treatment, the latest in a long line of poverty-stricken Kurds resorting to the work as 'kolbars' as a way out of the abject conditions they live in in Iran's West Azarbaijan province.

Kolbar News reports that between March 2023 and March 2024, 444 Kolbars were killed or injured along the border areas and interprovincial routes between West Azarbaijan, Kurdistan, and Kermanshah provinces due to factors such as direct shooting by regime military forces, avalanches, frostbite, stepping on mines, falling from mountains and heights, among others.

The direct shooting by military forces accounted for 373 out of the 444 who were killed or injured. Often the kolbars are smuggling the likes of illegal fuel, among other goods, in one of Iran's poorest provinces, many of whom are under the age of 18.