The Minnesota congresswoman announced the news in an emotional post eulogizing her late father on Monday.
Rep. Ilhan Omar's father has died. The Minnesota congresswoman announced the news in an emotional post eulogizing her late father, who died due to complications from COVID-19.
Omar shared a public statement in which she paid tribute to her father and shared a Quranic quote, written in Arabic, that she translated as, "Surely we belong to God and to him shall we return."
"It is with tremendous sadness and pain that I share that my father, Nur Omar Mohamed, passed away today due to complications from COVID-19," Omar, 37, shared. "No words can describe what he meant to me and all who knew him," she continued. "My family and I ask for your respect and privacy during this time."
She shared the news in a tribute on social media as well, alongside a photo of herself and her father.
Omar -- who is the first Somali-American and among the first Muslim women to serve as a congressional representative -- was raised by her father after her mother's death when she was a baby, the New York Times reported in an profile of the congresswoman.
In January 2019, Omar shared a photo of herself and her father walking through Virginia's Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, and she explained the significance of the location to their lives.
"23 years ago, from a refugee camp in Kenya, my father and I arrived at an airport in Washington DC," Omar wrote. "Today, we return to that same airport on the eve of my swearing in as the first Somali-American in Congress."
In the United States, there have been over 2.18 million reported cases of COVID-19 over the past five months, with over 118,000 deaths attributed to the virus.
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