February 07 2020
The “American contractor” killed when Iraqi militiamen working for Iran fired onto a base near Kirkuk in December was a naturalized American born in Iraq.
It was the killing of the contractor that started the tit-for-tat actions that resulted in the assassination of Iranian Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleymani.
The Iraqi-born contract employee was not named until all his family had been notified and the fact that he was Iraqi-born got very little attention in the media when he was finally identified after several days.
Nawres Waleed Hamid died December 27. He was buried in the Muslim cemetery in Sacramento, California. About 50 people, mostly from the Sacramento Muslim community, attended the burial.
His widow, Noor Alkhali, said he was employed by Valiant Integrated Services to serve as an Arabic-English translator for the firm’s operations with the US military in Iraq. The company paid for the funeral.
He leaves behind two sons, aged 8 and 2, who were both born in the United States.
Alkhali said the couple moved to the United States in 2011, when she was pregnant. Her husband went to American River Community College and earned a degree in computer sciences.
She said she plans to remain in the United States. “What would I return to in Iraq? Now my focus is on my two children. They are my world.”