Former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon died at a hospital near Tel Aviv on Saturday, aged of 85, after spending eight years in a coma, Israeli media said.
There was no immediate confirmation from Sheba hospital, where he was being treated, with a spokesperson announcing a statement would be given at 3:00 pm.
The long-time leader of the right-wing nationalist camp in Israeli politics suffered a massive stroke on January 4, 2006, slipping into a coma from which he has never recovered.
Sharon was first elected prime minister in February 2001, just months after walking through east Jerusalem's flashpoint Al-Aqsa mosque compound, revered by Jews as the Temple Mount, in an action that sparked the second Palestinian uprising.
In November 2005, he left the right-wing Likud to set up a new party, Kadima, frustrated by hardliners opposed to his withdrawal of troops and settlers from the Gaza Strip that year and to any further concessions in the occupied West Bank.
Born in British-mandate Palestine on February 27, 1928, to parents from Belarus, Sharon summed himself up in the title of his autobiography: "Warrior".
While his administration was initially seen as the most hawkish in Israeli history, less than four years after his 2001 election, it withdrew troops and settlers from Gaza, Palestinian territory occupied in the 1967 war.
Dubbed "the Bulldozer" both for his style and his physique, Sharon is also remembered by Arabs as the "Butcher of Beirut" for the massacres of Palestinian refugees at Sabra and Shatila by a Lebanese militia, while Israeli troops stood by.