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Iraqi State TV Says Former President Talabani Dies


Iraqi President Jalal Talabani gestures as he sits in a rehabilitation facility in Berlin, December 9, 2013
Iraqi President Jalal Talabani gestures as he sits in a rehabilitation facility in Berlin, December 9, 2013

Former Iraqi President and Kurdish leader Jalal Talabani died on October 3 at the age of 83.

Iraqi state TV reported that Talabani died in a hospital in Germany.

A close family friend and a senior Kurdish official in Irbil, the seat of the Kurdistan Regional Government in northern Iraq, were quoted as saying he died after his condition rapidly deteriorated on October 3.

Talabani suffered a stroke in 2012 and was moved to a German hospital later that year for treatment.

Talabani, a veteran leader of the Kurdish struggle for self-determination, was elected president in 2005, two years after the U.S.-led invasion that toppled dictator Saddam Hussein.

He was the seventh president of Iraq and the country’s first non-Arab president.

Talabani stepped down in 2014.

He was born near Irbil in 1933.

Based on reporting by dpa, Reuters, and AP

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