Former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon dead at age 85

Ariel Sharon, the former Israeli general and prime minister who was in a coma for eight years after he had a stroke at the height of his power, died on Saturday aged 85, his family and the government said.

Sharon's son Gilad announced the death at Sheba Medical Center, the hospital where his father had been treated. Doctors there had predicted his imminent death after his health declined sharply last week.

"He has gone. He went when he decided to go," Gilad said. 

The former politician and military leader will lie in state at the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, on Sunday. Following a public procession next week, he will be buried next to his wife at his family farm in southern Israel.

The hard-charging Sharon was one of the region's most iconic figures, who was adored by Israelis and reviled by Palestinians.

As one of Israel's most famous soldiers, Sharon was known for bold tactics and an occasional refusal to obey orders.

As a politician he became known as "the bulldozer," a man contemptuous of his critics while also capable of getting things done.

In 1982, as minister of defense, he led Israel into a divisive war in Lebanon and was found by an Israeli government commission indirectly responsible for the massacre of thousands of Palestinians at the Sabra and Shatilla refugee camps outside Beirut when his troops allowed allied Lebanese militias into the camps.

Yet ultimately he transformed himself into a prime minister and statesman.

Ministers in Israel's right-wing government, and the political opposition, mourned a tough and wily leader who left big footprints on the region through military invasion, Jewish settlement building on captured land and a shock, unilateral decision to pull Israeli troops and settlers out of the Gaza Strip in 2005.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu expressed "deep sorrow" at the death of Sharon, calling him "a great warrior and military leader," according to the Jerusalem Post.

There was no immediate comment on the death from Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, with whom Sharon's Likud party successor, Netanyahu, has been holding U.S.-sponsored peace talks.

But a senior Palestinian official from Abbas' Fatah party blamed Sharon for the death of former Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.

"Sharon was a criminal, responsible for the assassination of Arafat, and we would have hoped to see him appear before the International Criminal Court as a war criminal," Jibril Rajub said.

Many in Palestinian society believe Israel assasinated Arafat, who was posthumously found to have been poisened with radioactive polonium before dying in 2004.

In Gaza, the Hamas government – whose political fortunes rose with the Israeli withdrawal – savored Sharon's demise.

"We have become more confident in victory with the departure of this tyrant," said Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zurhi.

"Our people today feel extreme happiness at the death and departure of this criminal whose hands were smeared with the blood of our people and the blood of our leaders here and in exile."