A 70-year-old cleric died in Iraq on Wednesday, just hours after being confirmed as a carrier of Chinese coronavirus, making him the first Iraqi fatality.
The autonomous Kurdish region in Iraq where the man died confirmed the news on Wednesday morning and revealed that his health had long been “unstable” and he had been under “intense medical care.”
He was identified by the head of the Sulaimani Endowment Department, Ako Hassan, as Mullah Rashid Abdulrahman, a cleric at Khanaqa Mahmwi mosque in downtown Sulaimani, a city within the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG).
“Until a few days ago, the preacher had gone to the mosque,” Hassan noted. “Thus, we must take very serious measures at the mosque.”
The head of the Kurdistan Union of Islamic Scholars, Mullah Abdulla Saeed, announced on Wednesday that all Friday prayers would be canceled this week at all mosques in Sulaimani city. A fatwa committee will also meet to discuss the possible closure of local mosques. The KRG announced strict measures to contain the virus, shutting down schools and reducing working hours across state-run institutions.
Abdulrahman’s death is the first as a result of the Chinese coronavirus in Iraq, where there are currently 32 confirmed cases of the virus nationwide. The country had previously held out against the spread of the virus despite neighboring Iran being home to one of the most severe, uncontrolled outbreaks in the world. Iran has recorded the most cases in the world outside of China; Iraq closed border and has ordered any Iraqi citizen returning from the country to undergo at least 14 days in quarantine.
Around 92 people have died as a result of the virus in Iran, according to official figures, while around 3,000 people are believed to be infected. BBC Persia recently cited internal health officials who claimed that the figure may in fact be much higher.
Yet there can be little doubt about the level of concern from Iranian health authorities over the outbreak. Over 300,000 of the regime’s security forces are now carrying out a door to door campaign to individually assess those believed to be at risk, as well as deploying water cannons and drones to try and disinfect the streets.
The regime also ordered the temporary release of more than 54,000 inmates, approximately 20 percent of its imprisoned population, to slow the spread of the coronavirus in its notoriously overcrowded facilities.
Although there are now signs that the virus’s spread is slowing down across China, it has now spread to 56 countries and territories around the world, infecting over 91,000 people worldwide and killing 3,110 as of Wednesday afternoon. Some of the other most affected countries Italy, South Korea, and Japan.
Follow Ben Kew on Facebook, Twitter at @ben_kew, or email him at bkew@breitbart.com.
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