A total of 97 mules used to smuggle items between Turkey and Iran "fled" to Iran before a court ruled for their slaughter. The mules were confiscated in a village in the southeastern Turkish province of Hakkari in November 2014 in an operation against fuel smugglers using the animals in the process. The animals were entrusted to the headman of the village during the legal process, but one day before a court ordered their slaughter on the grounds that the animals from Iran posed a disease risk that can be spread to other animals in the area, the headman found the mules had escaped from the tent in which they were kept during a snowstorm. The headman chased after them only to find the animals' footprints in the snow ended at the border.