BAGHDAD: Kurdish politician Fouad Massoum was named Iraq’s new president on Thursday hours after an attack on a prison convoy killed dozens of people, brutally underscoring the challenges faced by the country’s leaders as they struggle to form a new government.

Massoum, 76, one of the founders of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan party led by the previous president, Jalal Talabani, accepted the position after winning two-thirds of the votes, noting the “huge security, political and economic tasks” facing the government.

Last month’s rapid advance of the Islamic State extremist group, which captured Iraq’s second largest city of Mosul, has plunged the country into its worst crisis since the withdrawal of US troops in 2011 and inflamed already-existing tensions between sectarian and political rivals.—AP

Published in Dawn, July 25th, 2014