Cuban revolutionary leader Fidel Castro, a towering figure of 20th century history, died Friday aged 90, his brother, President Raul Castro, announced.
One of the world's longest-serving rulers and modern history's most singular characters, he defied successive US administrations and assassination attempts.
He crushed opposition at home to lead the communist Caribbean island through the Cold War before stepping aside in 2006.
He eventually lived to see the historic restoration of diplomatic ties with Washington last year.
"The commander in chief of the Cuban revolution died at 22:29 hours this evening," the president announced on national television just after midnight Friday (0500 GMT Saturday).
Cuban President Fidel Castro addresses the audience during an event with his Venezuelan counterpart Hugo Chavez. Source: AFP
Raul Castro, who took power after his elder brother Fidel was hospitalized in 2006, said that the revolutionary leader's remains will be cremated early on Saturday, "in compliance with his expressed will.
Political survivor
The bearded, cigar-puffing leader, renowned for trademark army fatigues and hours-long public tirades, grabbed power in a January 1, 1959 revolution.
Living by the slogan "socialism or death," he kept the faith to the end, even as the Cold War came and went.
His rule endured numerous assassination attempts and the disastrous US-backed Bay of Pigs invasion attempt in 1961.
"If I am considered a myth, the United States deserves the credit," he said in 1988.
Castro was at the center of the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, as the world stood on the brink of nuclear war until the Soviet Union blinked in its bid to station strategic missiles on Cuban soil.
Well into his old age, Castro unleashed furious diatribes against Washington until he was slowed by surgery in July 2006.
A poster of Cuban Revolution leader Fidel Castro is seen on a wall in Havana, Cuba, Saturday, Aug. 13, 2016. Source: AAP
Revolution
An energetic symbol of defiance for developing countries and a driving force behind the Non-Aligned Movement, Castro proved even a small sovereign nation could thumb its nose at the world's biggest superpower.
Born August 13, 1926 to a prosperous Spanish immigrant landowner and a Cuban mother of humble background, Castro was a quick learner and a keen baseball player, reportedly once dreaming of a life in the US big leagues.
His political path was set when he formed a guerrilla opposition to the US-backed government of Fulgencio Batista, who seized power in a 1952 coup.
In 1953 Castro led a small rebel force that attacked a major military base, the Moncada Barracks, in a bid to oust Batista. The drive failed. Castro was put on trial, and in a long, now famous closing self-defense speech said he did not care if was convicted.
"History will absolve me," he said.
After he was jailed for two years by the Batista regime, he went into exile in Mexico and organized followers for their ultimately triumphant uprising.
It was launched when, on December 2, 1956 they sailed to southeastern Cuba on the ship Granma. Twenty-five months later, they ousted Batista and Castro was named prime minister.
His power undisputed in 1959, the Jesuit-schooled lawyer threw Cuba's lot in with the Soviet Union, which bankrolled his regime until 1989, when the Eastern Bloc's collapse sent the economy into a tailspin.
Ceded power
He ceded power to Raul, 85, in July 2006 when Fidel underwent intestinal surgery and disappeared from public view.
Castro's private life was just that. In 1948, he married Mirta Diaz-Balart, who gave him a son, Fidelito. The couple later divorced.
In 1952, Castro met Naty Revuelta, a socialite married to a doctor, and they had a daughter, Alina, in 1956.
He met Celia Sanchez, said to have been the love of his life, in 1957 and remained with her until her death in 1980.
Since the 1980s, Castro's partner has been Dalia Soto del Valle, with whom he has had five children: Angel, Antonio, Alejandro, Alexis and Alex.
Who was Fidel Castro?
* Fidel Castro led Cuba for five decades and was the world's third longest-serving head of state, after Britain's Queen Elizabeth and the King of Thailand. He temporarily ceded power to his brother Raul in July 2006 after undergoing intestinal surgery. The handover of power became official in 2008.
* In his last years, Castro occasionally appeared in public and in videos and pictures usually meeting with guests. He wrote hundreds of columns for the official media. Stooped and walking with difficulty, Castro was seen in public twice in 2012 and twice in 2013. He was seen in public on Jan. 8, 2014, at the opening of a cultural center, though photos of visiting dignitaries at the Castro home appeared after that.
* Castro holds the record for the longest speech ever delivered to the United Nations: 4 hours and 29 minutes, on Sept. 26, 1960, according to the U.N. website. One of his longest speeches on record lasted 7 hours and 30 minutes on Feb. 24, 1998, after the national assembly re-elected him to a five-year term as president.
* Castro claimed he survived 634 attempts or plots to assassinate him, mainly masterminded by the Central Intelligence Agency and U.S.-based exile organizations. They may have included poison pills, a toxic cigar, exploding mollusks, and a chemically tainted diving suit. Another alleged plan involved giving him powder that would make his beard fall out and so undermine his popularity.
* Despite the plots, a U.S.-backed exile invasion at the Bay of Pigs and five decades of economic sanctions, Castro outlasted nine U.S. presidents, from Dwight Eisenhower to Bill Clinton, stepping down while George W. Bush was in office.
* Castro used to chomp on Cuban cigars but gave them up in 1985. Years later he summed up the harm of smoking tobacco by saying: "The best thing you can do with this box of cigars is give them to your enemy."
* Time Magazine in 2012 named Castro as one of the 100 most influential personalities of all time.
* Castro had nine children from five women. His eldest son Fidel Castro Diaz-Balart, who is the image of his father and is known as Fidelito, is a Soviet-trained nuclear scientist born in 1949 out of his brief marriage to Mirta Diaz-Balart. Daughter Alina Fernandez, the result of an affair with a Havana socialite when Castro was underground in the 1950s, escaped from Cuba disguised as a tourist in 1993 and is a vocal critic. Castro has five sons with his common-law wife since the 1960s, Dalia Soto del Valle. He also has a son and a daughter born to two other women with whom he had affairs before coming to power.
