Mansour al-Mareed elected as new governor of Iraq’s Nineveh province
MOSUL,— The Provincial Council of Nineveh on Monday elected Mansour al-Mareed as the new governor of the province, after the former head was sacked over the deadly ferry sinking in the provincial capital Mosul, the official television reported.
Up to 28 out of the 39 members of the provincial council voted in favor of al-Mareed, while the rest 11 walked out of the session, the state-run Iraqiya channel said.
The council members also voted in favor of Sirwan as the first deputy governor with 26 votes, but the council postponed the vote for the second deputy until next session, it added, without giving further details.
Al-Mareed is an engineer and a businessman, who was born in 1965 in the town of al-Qayyara, some 50 km south of Nineveh’s provincial capital Mosul.
The voting for new provincial governor came after the Iraqi parliament unanimously voted to sack the former governor Nawfal al-Akoub and his two deputies on March 24.
On March 21, a ferry boat carrying dozens of people capsized when crossing from the bank of the river to a small tourist island called Um al Rabeein in northern Mosul, some 400 km north of the capital Baghdad.
The accident, which killed some 100 people, was the gravest accident in Mosul since the city was liberated from extremist Islamic State militants in late 2017.
Angry residents of Mosul blamed the negligence of the local government for the incident, accusing the government of corruption and mismanagement.
In April, the Iraqi Commission of Integrity has revealed that nearly $60 million of public money was stolen by officials in Nineveh province who were close to former governor Nawfal Hammadi al-Sultan.
A court in Nineveh governorate has issued an arrest warrant for the fugitive ex-governor Sultan on corruption and other charges stemming from the ongoing investigation into the ferry disaster.
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