COLIN POWELL: FORMER US SECRETARY OF STATE DIES OF COVID COMPLICATIONS

Former US Secretary of State Colin Powell has died aged 84 of Covid-19 complications, his family has announced.

Powell, the former US secretary of state who played a pivotal role in attempting to justify the 2003 invasion of Iraq, died due to Covid-19 as announced Monday.

He was a former top military officer who rose to become the first African-American secretary of state in 2001 under Republican George W Bush.

A statement by the family read;

We have lost a remarkable and loving husband, father, grandfather and a great American.

We want to thank the medical staff… for their caring treatment.

The statement revealed that he had been fully vaccinated against Covid-19.

Former President George W Bush was among the first to pay tribute;

A family man and a friend who was such a favourite of presidents that he earned the Presidential Medal of Freedom – twice.

Powell, a retired four-star general who served as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the early 1990s, had been treated for Covid at Walter Reed national medical centre in Bethesda, Maryland.