Nechirvan Barzani Nominated as Iraqi Kurdistan President

Iraqi Kurdistan Region Prime Minister Nechirvan Barzani. (Reuters)
Iraqi Kurdistan Region Prime Minister Nechirvan Barzani. (Reuters)
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Nechirvan Barzani Nominated as Iraqi Kurdistan President

Iraqi Kurdistan Region Prime Minister Nechirvan Barzani. (Reuters)
Iraqi Kurdistan Region Prime Minister Nechirvan Barzani. (Reuters)

Prime Minister Nechirvan Barzani was nominated Monday by Iraq’s Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) to succeed his uncle Masoud Barzani as president of Iraqi Kurdistan.

Masoud Barzani’s son Masrour was also nominated as premier of the regional government.

Masrour Barzani is currently Iraqi Kurdistan’s security chief. Both Masrour and Nechirvan have occupied senior roles within the KRG throughout the last decade.

With 45 of 111 seats, the KDP is the biggest party in the Kurdish assembly after September’s regional election but 11 shy of an outright majority, and will have to govern in coalition.

Veteran Kurdish leader Masoud Barzani, still the head of the KDP, stepped down after 12 years as regional president in November 2017, less than a month after helming a referendum on Kurdish independence that backfired and triggered a crisis for Iraq’s Kurds.

The post has remained vacant ever since. The president’s powers were divided between the prime minister, parliament and the judiciary in a makeshift arrangement, leaving the future of the presidency uncertain.

Relations with the previous Iraqi administration of prime minister Haider al-Abadi were strained by the referendum. But with a new Iraqi government in place, led by Adel Abdul-Mahdi, Erbil and Baghdad have in recent weeks signaled a willingness to work together.



Four Killed in Syria in Attack on Aleppo University Dorms

19 November 2024, Syria, Al-Nayrab: A picture made available on 21 November 2024 shows Ismail Al-Riya standing with his friends to display the First Person View (FPV) drones they were able to shoot down and dismantle. Photo: Anas Alkharboutli/dpa
19 November 2024, Syria, Al-Nayrab: A picture made available on 21 November 2024 shows Ismail Al-Riya standing with his friends to display the First Person View (FPV) drones they were able to shoot down and dismantle. Photo: Anas Alkharboutli/dpa
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Four Killed in Syria in Attack on Aleppo University Dorms

19 November 2024, Syria, Al-Nayrab: A picture made available on 21 November 2024 shows Ismail Al-Riya standing with his friends to display the First Person View (FPV) drones they were able to shoot down and dismantle. Photo: Anas Alkharboutli/dpa
19 November 2024, Syria, Al-Nayrab: A picture made available on 21 November 2024 shows Ismail Al-Riya standing with his friends to display the First Person View (FPV) drones they were able to shoot down and dismantle. Photo: Anas Alkharboutli/dpa

Four civilians including two students were killed on Friday in the Syrian city of Aleppo in insurgent shelling of university student dormitories, the state news agency SANA reported.
Opposition led by the extremist militant group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham launched an incursion on Wednesday into a dozen towns and villages in the northwestern province of Aleppo, which is controlled by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's government forces.
The next day, Russian and Syrian warplanes bombed opposition-held northwest Syria near the border with Türkiye to try to push back an insurgent offensive that had captured territory for the first time in years, Syrian army and opposition sources said.
The attack was the biggest since March 2020 when Russia, which backs Assad, and Türkiye, which supports the opposition, agreed to a ceasefire to end years of fighting that had uprooted millions of Syrians opposed to Assad's rule.