The Tunisian Presidency announced on Thursday that 92-year-old Tunisian President, Mohamed Beji Caid Essebsi, has passed away at Tunis military hospital.
The nonagenarian president died after being hospitalised for the third time in recent weeks. He was hospitalised twice in June.
Essebsi came to power in 2014, after leading the immediate transition as prime minister in 2011 following the Tunisian revolution.
He was Tunisia’s first democratically elected president, who was inaugurated three years after the breakout of the Tunisian revolution which started the Arab Spring and ousted former president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali.
Essebsi was due to leave his post by the end of his term this November. He was a veteran politician who served as an adviser to former Tunisian President Habib Bourguiba, and held a number of key jobs under Bourguiba and later under Ben Ali.