KIRKUK, Iraq: Former Kirkuk governor Najmeddin Karim, who was forced to quit for organising a referendum in defiance of Iraq’s federal government and wanted for corruption, died on Saturday, his family said.
Aged 71, Karim passed away at dawn in a hospital in the United States. He held both Iraqi and US citizenship.
He would be buried in Iraqi Kurdistan, said the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) of which he was once a member.
Kirkuk is one of several regions that Kurdish peshmerga fighters took over in 2014 as jihadists from the Islamic State group swept through much of northern and western Iraq.