Fidel Castro, the Cuban revolutionary leader who built a communist state on the doorstep of the United States, has died aged 90.
Raul Castro, Fidel's brother and current president of Cuba, announced his death on state television early on Saturday.
The leader of the 1959 revolution, which overthrew the US-backed dictator Fulgencio Batista, defied the US efforts to topple him for five decades, before ill health led him to make way for his brother Raul, 84, in 2006.
In his final years, Fidel lived in relative seclusion but occasionally wrote opinion pieces or appeared meeting with visiting dignitaries.
Ashen and grave, President Castro told the nation in an unexpected late night broadcast on state television that Fidel Castro had died and would be cremated on Saturday.
There would now be several days of national mourning on the island.
Raul Castro ended the announcement by shouting the revolutionary slogan: "Towards victory, always!"
In April, Fidel Castro gave a rare speech on the final day of the country's Communist Party congress.
He acknowledged his advanced age but said Cuban communist concepts were still valid and the Cuban people "will be victorious".
"I'll soon be 90," the former president said, adding that this was "something I'd never imagined".
"Soon I'll be like all the others, "to all our turn must come," Fidel Castro said.
Castro - who had survived many assassination plots - was the longest serving non-royal leader of the 20th Century.
Castro temporarily handed over power to his brother in 2006 as he was recovering from an acute intestinal ailment.
Raul Castro officially became president two years later.
Fidel Castro's key dates
- 1926: Born in the south-eastern Oriente Province of Cuba
- 1953: Imprisoned after leading an unsuccessful rising against Batista's regime
- 1955: Released from prison under an amnesty deal
- 1956: With Che Guevara, begins a guerrilla war against the government
- 1959: Defeats Batista, sworn in as prime minister of Cuba
- 1961: Fights off CIA-sponsored Bay of Pigs invasion by Cuban exiles
- 1962: Sparks Cuban missile crisis by agreeing that USSR can deploy nuclear missiles in Cuba
- 1976: Elected president by Cuba's National Assembly
- 1992: Reaches an agreement with US over Cuban refugees
- 2008: Stands down as president of Cuba due to health issues
Throughout the Cold War, Fidel Castro was Washington's bete noire.
An accomplished tactician on the battlefield, he and his small army of guerrillas overthrew the military leader Fulgencio Batista in 1959 to widespread popular support.
Within two years of taking power, he declared the revolution to be Marxist-Leninist in nature and allied the island nation firmly to the Soviet Union.
Yet, despite the constant threat of a US invasion as well as the long-standing economic embargo on the island, Castro managed to maintain a communist revolution in a nation just 90 miles (145km) off the coast of Florida.
Despised by his critics as much as he was revered by his followers, he outlasted ten US presidents and defied scores of attempts on his life by the CIA.
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