Iraq's president, Jalal Talabani, has passed away on Tuesday aged 83, Iraqi Television has reported.

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 US-led invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein.

source: Alarabiya