2 brothers of local official in Mosul arrested

NINEWA / IraqiNews.com: Ninewa provincial council member Ibrahim Mereir said on Tuesday that two of his brothers were arrested by a U.S. special force south of Mosul city. “The force arrested two of my brothers after it raided our house in Mereir village, south of Mosul,” Mereir, who is the council’s youths & sports committee chairman, told IraqiNews.com. He said that one of the two arrested brothers is a pensioner while the other works in the facility protection department. He did not give more details. Mosul, the capital city of Ninewa, lies 405 km north of Baghdad. The original city of Mosul stands on the west bank of the Tigris River, opposite the ancient biblical city of Nineveh on the east bank, but the metropolitan area has now grown to encompass substantial areas on both banks, with five bridges linking the two sides. Despite having an amount of Kurdish population, it does not form part of the area controlled by the Kurdistan Regional Government Kurdistan RegionG). There are different communities in Mosul like Christians, Shiites and Kurds along with a Sunni majority. The city is also a historic center for the Nestorian Christianity of the Assyrians, containing the tombs of several Old Testament prophets such as Jonah, Yunus in Arabic, and Nahum. AmR (S) 1