Former Cuban president Fidel Castro dies

People have started pouring out onto the streets to lament - and celebrate - the death of former Cuban president Fidel Castro.

While some Cubans described his loss as a "a painful blow", others rejoiced, blaming the populist leader for the deaths of innocent people and separating families.

The 90-year-old revolutionary leader's death at 10.29pm on Friday, after a long battle with illness, was announced on state television by his brother and current Cuban President, Raul Castro. 

He said "the commander in chief of the Cuban Revolution" would be cremated on Saturday before a period of nine national days of mourning. He concluded: "Until the everlasting victory, always."

A defining figure of the 20th century, Fidel Castro took power following a revolution in 1959, to become at 32, the youngest leader in Latin America, and fended off a US-backed invasion at the Bay of Pigs two years later.

His alliance with Moscow helped trigger the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, a 13-day showdown with the United States that brought the world close to a nuclear war.

Castro ruled Cuba for 49 years, before standing down from office in February 2008 after a long illness.

His own physician, a specialist in longevity, had suggested four years earlier the leader could live to 140. "I am not exaggerating," Dr Eugenio Selman said.

So the nation was stunned when its ageing, yet ironclad leader, handed over power temporarily to his brother in 2006, after an acute infection in his colon forced him to undergo emergency surgery.

Havana resident Mariela Alonso, a 45-year-old doctor, said: "There will be no one else like him. We will feel his physical absence." Mechanic Celestino Acosta described the news as "a painful blow for everyone".

In Old Havana, the city centre of the Cuban capital, people gathered around their radios, listening to state-run stations playing revolutionary anthems and reciting facts about Castro's life.

In Miami, Florida, jubilant Cuban exiles and their descendants rejoiced on the streets.

Cuban intelligence services claim Castro faced 634 assassination plots between 1958 and 2000, with some reportedly involving poisoned or explosive cigars.

"I don't think Fidel's passing is the big test. The big test is handing the revolution over to the next generation and that will happen when Raul steps down," Cuba expert Phil Peters of the Lexington Institute in Virginia said before Castro's death.

In 2014, under Raul Castro, Cuba and the US agreed to re-establish diplomatic relations and open economic and travel ties to end decades of hostility.

Fidel Castro's year-long silence thereafter raised questions about whether he agreed with his brother's decision.

n August, Castro, who defied the power of 11 US presidents, attended a celebration for his 90th birthday and marked the occasion by hitting out at Barack Obama. 

After Queen Elizabeth II and the King of Thailand, the Cuban leader - who reportedly married twice and fathered nine children, was the world's third longest-serving head of state.

Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev paid tribute to Castro for "strengthening" his island nation "during the harshest American blockade, when there was colossal pressure on him and he still took his country out of this blockade to a path of independent development".

"An actor of the Cold War... he represented, for Cubans, pride in rejecting external domination," said French President Francois Hollande, alluding to Castro's defiance of the United States.

Russian President Vladimir Putin hailed Castro as "the symbol of an era".

"The name of this distinguished statesman is rightly considered the symbol of an era in modern world history," he said in a telegram to Raul Castro. "Fidel Castro was a sincere and reliable friend of Russia."

Michael D Higgins, President of Ireland, said Castro "was of a generation of leaders that sought to offer an alternative global economic and social order".

He added he would be remembered "as a giant among global leaders whose view was not only one of freedom for his people but for all of the oppressed and excluded peoples on the planet".