US senator John McCain, a celebrated war hero known for reaching across the aisle in an increasingly divided America, died on Sunday, 26 August, following a battle with brain cancer. He was 81 years old.
"Senator John Sidney McCain III died at 4:28 pm on August 25, 2018. With the senator when he passed were his wife Cindy and their family," his office said in a statement.
"At his death, he had served the United States of America faithfully for 60 years. Sen McCain, thank you for your service," read a sign near the driveway of his home in a rural part of Sedona, Arizona, television footage showed, as a police escort accompanied the hearse that was to carry his body and local residents came bearing flowers for the late political titan.
US President Donald Trump took to Twitter to offer his condolences.
Former US President Barack Obama, the Democrat to whom McCain lost the presidency in the 2008 elections, said "we are all in his debt."
McCain’s daughter Meghan McCain took to Twitter to share a heart-felt post about him.
McCain, who was tortured during his five years as a prisoner of war in Vietnam, stopped treatment from an aggressive form of cancer earlier this week, his family saying "the progress of disease and the inexorable advance of age render their verdict." He had spent more than three decades in the Senate, looming large in debates over war and peace and the moral direction of the nation. Before joining the upper chamber, he served as a US representative from 1983 to 1987.
McCain had not been on the Senate floor in months, remaining at his Arizona home for treatment of glioblastoma – the same form of brain cancer that took the life of another Senate giant, Democrat Ted Kennedy, in 2009.
(With inputs from PTI)
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