Update | Ariel Sharon dies after 8-year coma, leaving behind a complex legacy

Ariel Sharon, who died yesterday aged 85, was one of Israel's most skilled but controversial political and military leaders whose ruthless methods earned him the nickname "The Bulldozer".

The veteran soldier fought in all of Israel's major wars before embarking on a turbulent political career in 1973 that ended dramatically in January 2006 when he suffered a massive stroke and fell into a coma from which he never recovered.

The Sheba Medical Centre that had been treating Sharon said last week that his health had been declining. His vital organs failed just before his death.

Long considered a pariah for his personal but "indirect" responsibility for the 1982 massacre of hundreds of Palestinians by Israel's Lebanese Phalangist allies in Beirut's Sabra and Shatila refugee camps, Sharon was elected prime minister in 2001.

One of the last members of the generation that founded Israel in 1948, he leaves a legacy that saw him push through a policy of separation from the Palestinians, orchestrate the unilateral withdrawal from Gaza in 2005 and begin building the sprawling West Bank barrier in 2002.

Born in British-mandate Palestine on February 26, 1928, to parents from Belarus, Sharon was just 17 when he joined the Haganah, the pre-state militia that fought in the 1948 war of independence and eventually became the Israeli army.