(Agencies)
Updated: 2007-09-26 15:48

IRBIL, Iraq -- Three weeks after she was burned, the petite 18-year-old lay in a hospital bed, her head, arms and upper torso swathed in cotton. Her seared face was daubed with ointment.

She looked at the ceiling and thought about her new life. "I don't know about the future," she said, still looking up. "It will be whatever Allah brings." She refused to give her name.

A gas stove had exploded when she'd tried to light it, she said.

Her nurses don't buy it. They recognize the pattern of the burns and have seen hundreds of cases like hers, many with variations on the same story. A teenage girl with a young marriage, and "a cooking accident."

In many parts of the world, such accidents would be attributed to "honor killings," the murders of young women by family or spouses because they didn't work hard enough, complained too much or dated the wrong men. There are honor killings in Iraqi Kurdistan , as well.

But health-care professionals and women's experts stress that what they're seeing here is different: a suicide epidemic in which Kurdistan's girls and young women are setting themselves on fire.

Suicide by fire among girls and young women in the region has been increasing sharply since 2004, said hospital workers, regional health officials and women's advocates.

The reasons may be manifold. Some experts blame an economic boom that's lured traditional villagers into cities with more modern values, resulting in family strains. But because the victims include lifelong city residents as well, a patriarchal culture that gives little power to women may be a bigger factor.

Kurdistan, a largely self-governing region of three provinces in northern Iraq, doesn't have accurate historical health data, but there were at least 360 female-burning suicides last year, said the region's health minister, Zyran Osman Yones.

Some victims are as young as 12, but most range from age 15 to 25. Nearly all choose fire as their method. The typical method is dousing themselves with kerosene and striking a match, often in a locked shower room.

"It's the most painful way to die," Yones said. "I don't know why they do it. In other cultures, they may use pills or guns, but for Kurds, they burn themselves. We even hear of cases among Kurds who have immigrated to Europe ."

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