Libya's National Assembly (Parliament) on Wednesday elected outgoing Deputy Prime Minister Mustafa Abu-Shakour as the oil-rich North African country's next Prime Minister, media reports said.
In a run-off vote, Abu-Shakour narrowly beat Mahmoud Jibril who served as interim Prime Minister following the ouster of Libyan dictator Moammar Qadhafi's regime in a popular uprising last year.
An optical engineer by profession, Abu-Shakour is the first elected head of government since Qadhafi was thrown out of power and subsequently killed by rebellion supporters in October 2011. He has pledged to make security a priority in a country where private militias and tribal chieftains are still powerful in urban centers.
Jibril had comfortably won the first round of the vote with 86 to 55 votes. But in the run-off, Abu-Shakour won 96 votes out of 190, two more than that of Jibril.
The election came a day after the killing of U.S. envoy to Libya Christopher Stevens and three other American nationals in an attack on the U.S. Consulate in the eastern city of Benghazi by heavily-armed militia men apparently enraged over an amateur American film ridiculing Prophet Mohammed.
An alumni of the University of Tripoli, he earned a PhD from the United States and worked as an academic and optical engineer. He returned home in 2011 to become an adviser to the National Transitional Council, which was formed during the Libyan revolt. He was appointed deputy to Prime Minister Abdurrahim al-Keib in November last.
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