United States House of Representatives member Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) announced in a statement late Monday that her father, Nur Omar, had died from the novel coronavirus.
“Surely we belong to God and to him shall we return. It is with tremendous sadness and pain to say goodbye to my father, Nur Omar Mohamed. No words can describe what he meant to me and all who knew and loved him,” she tweeted.
Politico reported that her father and grandfather raised her following her mother’s death in Somalia. She and Nur Omar arrived in the U.S. as refugees in 1995.
In 2018, Omar became the first Somali-American elected to Congress and one of the first two Muslim women elected.
“The pandemic is not over,” she tweeted on Sunday, urging people to take precautions against COVID-19 during protests.
More than 116,000 people of died from the virus in the United States and over 2 million people have contracted the virus, according to Johns Hopkins data.
Simon Ateba is Chief White House Correspondent for Today News Africa. Simon covers President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, the U.S. government, the United Nations, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and other financial and international institutions in Washington D.C. and New York City.
