John McCain dies at age of 81

Washington, Aug 26: John S. McCain, the proud naval aviator, a Republican congressman and senator from Arizona and a two-time contender for the presidency, died on Saturday at his home in Arizona. He was 81.

"Senator John Sidney McCain III died at 4:28 pm on August 25, 2018. With the senator when he passed were his wife Cindy and their family," his office said in a statement.

McCain died at 4:28 p.m. local time. He had suffered from a malignant brain tumor, called a glioblastoma, for which he had been treated periodically with radiation and chemotherapy since its discovery in 2017, a statement from his office read.

"At his death, he had served the United States of America faithfully for 60 years. Sen McCain, thank you for your service," read a sign near the driveway of his home in a rural part of Sedona, Arizona, television footage showed, as a police escort accompanied the hearse that was to carry his body and local residents came bearing flowers for the late political titan.

McCain, who was tortured during his five years as a prisoner of war in Vietnam, stopped treatment from an aggressive form of cancer earlier this week, his family saying "the progress of disease and the inexorable advance of age render their verdict." He had spent more than three decades in the Senate, looming large in debates over war and peace and the moral direction of the

Before joining the upper chamber, he served as a US representative from 1983 to 1987. McCain had not been on the Senate floor in months, remaining at his Arizona home for treatment of glioblastoma -- the same form of brain cancer that took the life of another Senate giant, Democrat Ted Kennedy, in 2009.

(with PTI inputs)