Cuba's Fidel Castro dead aged 90


Fidel Castro, the Cuban revolutionary leader who built a communist state on the doorstep of the US, has died aged 90.

Raul Castro, Fidel's brother and current president of Cuba, announced his death on state television in Havana 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 to meet visiting dignitaries.

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