On Wednesday, his office said that he had suffered a stroke. As a result, he was was hospitalized earlier in the week.
Najmadin Karim was born in 1949 in Kirkuk’s Rashidawa neighborhood. He served as Kirkuk governor from 2011 to 2017 and is a graduate of the Mosul Medical College. He joined the Peshmerga forces in 1972.
He was a member of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) Political Bureau before his resignation.
Following the tensions between the then Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) and federal government precipitated by the 2017 Kurdistan Region Independence Referendum, Karim went to Erbil after the federal army and the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) recaptured Kirkuk and other disputed areas in an offensive that forced the Peshmerga forces to retreat.
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