Kurdish leader and former Iraqi president Talabani's dies

ERBIL, Iraq - 3 October 2017: Iraqi Kurdish leader and former Iraqi president Jalal Talabani died on Tuesday, Iraqi state TV said.

Talabani, a veteran leader of the Kurdish struggle for self-determination, stepped down as president in 2014, after a long period of treatment following a stroke in 2012.

Talabani was born near Erbil, now the seat of the Kurdistan Regional Government in northern Iraq, in 1933. He was the first non-Arab president of Iraq, elected in 2005, two years after the U.S.-led invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein.