Pakistan’s former president General Pervez Musharraf, who took power in a bloodless coup in 1999 and launched a fight against Islamist extremism, has died at the age of 79, Daily Mail reports.
General Musharraf was a controversial military ruler who led a reluctant Pakistan into aiding the US war in Afghanistan against the same Taliban fighters his nation had previously backed, even as Islamic militants twice targeted him for assassination.
The former special forces commando became president through the last of a string of military coups that hit Pakistan after its founding amid the bloody 1947 partition of India.
He ruled the nuclear-armed state after his 1999 coup through turbulent times, including tensions with India, an atomic proliferation scandal and an Islamic extremist insurgency.
