A Syrian refugee identified as Ryyan Alshebl has been elected as the mayor of a village in Germany in a move that has left many stunned.
Africa Today News, New York gathered that he stood as a non-party candidate in the polls to become mayor of Ostelsheim in the southwestern state of Baden-Württemberg.
The municipality declared him the winner on Monday morning after polling the majority of the votes – 55.41 percent.
29-year-old Alshebl defeated non-party candidates Marco Strauß and Mathias Fey.
The member of the Green Party said his experiences in the election campaign were ‘mostly positive’.
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As mayor, Alshebl disclosed he planned to move to Ostelsheim in the district of Calw.
He fled the town of Sweida in the south of Syria in 2015 and joined the administration of Althengstett town hall in 2016.
In another development, in a move set to escalate tensions with the West, Russia has resolved to position tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus near its ally’s borders with NATO countries, the Russian envoy to Minsk has revealed.
Russian ambassador to Belarus Boris Gryzlov last night that the weapons would be moved to the country’s western border as part of moves to ‘ensure security’.
Speaking to Belarusian state television, Gryzlov said; ‘This will be done despite the noise in Europe and the United States’.
Gryzlov said a storage facility would be completed by July 1, without specifying exactly where the weapons would be stationed.
The envoy’s comments come after Russian President Vladimir Putin last month announced plans to station tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus.
Belarus shares borders with Lithuania, Latvia, and Poland, all of which are members of NATO, the military alliance originally established to deter Soviet expansion in Europe after World War II.