US war hero John McCain dies
US Republican Senator John McCain, 81, the conservative party’s 2008 presidential nominee, died late on Saturday, 13 months after revealing he was suffering brain cancer, his office announced.
McCain was known to the end as a pugnacious maverick, last month offering blistering criticism of President Donald Trump’s failure to stand up to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“With the senator when he passed were his wife Cindy and their family. At his death, he had served the US faithfully for 60 years,” his office said in a statement.
McCain had halted treatment on Friday for aggressive glioblastoma, which was diagnosed in July 2017. The retired US Navy fighter pilot, who was shot down over North Vietnam in 1967 and held as a prisoner of war for more than five years, entered Congress in 1983 from Arizona and served in the Senate since 1987.
Days after undergoing brain surgery in Arizona, with open stitches above his left brow, McCain appeared on the Senate floor in late July 2017, delivering a speech against partisanship and eventually casting the deciding vote against a major healthcare measure supported by Trump.
The hawkish chairman of the Senate Armed Services committee was a top Republican voice on defence and foreign policy for decades.
McCain has been a leading Republican dissident since Trump took office in January 2017.