Abandoned and usually traveling in packs, stray dogs have recently gotten more media coverage after a recent spate of attacks on people. The attacks pose a high risk, especially considering the death of a 10-year-old girl in the southern province of Antalya. The girl was crushed by a moving truck as she jumped onto a busy street while running away from the dogs chasing her earlier this week. She succumbed to her injuries from the accident.

On Wednesday, B.A., 13, was the recent victim but he, fortunately, escaped with injuries. He was on a bicycle in the western province of Aydın when two stray dogs chased him. Trying to flee, he rammed into a car. The boy is being hospitalized with a broken leg and multiple other fractures. "It could have been worse if the car did not steer away at the last minute," he told Anadolu Agency (AA) on Thursday. B.A. said he was riding to the school when the dogs started barking at him first and then ran toward him.

"Dogs are living creatures like us and have a right to live but my son has a life too. I call upon authorities to find a solution to this problem," his father Şükrü A. said.

In the northern province of Karabük, A.K., a student, was injured last month as she was fleeing dogs inside a complex of apartment buildings. On Wednesday, a 15-year-old girl narrowly escaped an attack of the same dogs in the complex by jumping off a high wall. Her mother E.K. said she is traumatized to even think about the episode and how she rushed to her aid. "She still can’t walk properly," she lamented. E.K. told Ihlas News Agency (IHA) that though they love animals, the attacks have instilled fear in them. "Please take them off the streets and (to shelters)," she appealed to the authorities.

Victims are mostly young boys and girls but occasionally, adults suffer too. Çiğdem Dadandı, a university student in the northwestern province of Kocaeli, is among them. The freshman was walking on the campus when stray dogs attacked her and bit her leg. "I fell on my back while running from them and they came at me. I thought they would bite off my face. I am still traumatized," Dadandı told Demirören News Agency (DHA) on Wednesday.

Stray dogs had attacked another student a few days before this incident but she escaped with no injuries. "Around five dogs encircled me all of a sudden as I was walking. I did nothing to intimidate them nor I was carrying something that would attract them, like food. They bit me first and I tripped. I cannot forget the fear I had at that time," she recalled. Dadandı said that the university students have clubs that look after the stray animals and they regularly feed them but it was not enough. "There are too many dogs and most of them are not sterilized, so, their numbers grow. They have no place else to go," she said.

The attacks have triggered a social media frenzy with some calling for more effective measures to tackle the stray dogs' menace. Stray animals are usually cared for at shelters run by municipalities and sometimes, are released back onto the streets after they are sterilized. Deadly feral dogs, on the other hand, are rare in the country, except for the dangerous pit bulls that were abandoned by their owners after the country adopted a ban on their ownership. However, the majority of "perpetrators" in recent dog attacks were not pit bulls. In Istanbul, Turkey’s most populated city, complaints are piling up about aggressive animals in recent days. Municipalities tackle the cases and aggressive dogs, when caught, are taken to rehabilitation centers and quarantined for 10 days before they are released.

Gökhan Karadağ, the chief veterinarian at a stray animals clinic in Eyüpsultan district, said the dogs are sterilized, if they are not already when they are brought to the rehabilitation center, and kept in isolation if they are involved in "biting incidents." Karadağ told AA that they received 2,586 complaints in one year about animals attacking humans. "We are receiving a high number of complaints about stray animals," he said.

Karadağ also noted a rise in the number of dogs abandoned by their owners, from rottweilers to Labradors. "They are trained dogs and of diverse breeds. People dump them when they think they can no longer care for them or afford to them," he said.

Ömür Uzunali, who heads a veterinary department at a rehabilitation center for stray animals in Istanbul's Üsküdar district, said although dog bites were rare, they often come across dog attacks. "We receive calls about at least one incident every day. We check the area where dogs are seen and pick up dogs who are not sterilized. They are released back after sterilization to the same area," Uzunali said.

The causes of dog attacks are not known but experts explain that canine species tend to be more aggressive at this time of the year when they go into heat. Even sterilization sometimes fails to curb the aggression in the nature of some dog breeds.