Iranian leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini died Sunday, 12 days after he underwent surgery for bleeding in his digestive system, the official Iranian news agency reported.
The Islamic Republic News Agency, monitored in London, reported his death in an urgent dispatch without giving details.Tehran Radio, the state-run radio, also reported the ayatollah's death in its early morning broadcast, reported the British Broadcasting Corp., monitored in London.
Iran on Saturday had said Khomeini's health was deteriorating and urged the nation to pray for the leader, who underwent surgery last month for bleeding in his digestive system.
Iran's state-run radio and television, monitored in Nicosia, had said the 86-year-old leader's condition was declining but it gave no details.
Both carried a brief statement from Khomeini's office that said: "At 3 p.m. (5:30 a.m. MST) on Saturday a complication arose in the imam's condition, which the doctors are trying to control. We urge the nation to pray for the imam's health, and hope that their prayers will be answered."
Khomeini is referred to by Iranians as the imam, or spiritual leader.
Earlier in the week, the television said a "slight cardiac complication" had arisen May 27, but that it was relieved the next day.
Iran's main opposition group, the Mujahedeen Khalq, or People's Holy Warriors, said last week that Khomeini suffered a heart attack May 27. The Mujahedeen's report could not be independently confirmed.
Khomeini had been reported ailing since he suffered a heart attack in 1986. Since then he was rarely seen outside his home in the north Tehran suburb of Jamaran. But his hospitalization heightened already intense speculation about who will succeed Khomeini as leader of the theocratic state.
Political turmoil has gripped the country since Khomeini launched a radical resurgence in February with his death decree against British author Salman Rushdie for allegedly blaspheming against Islam in his novel, "The Satanic Verses."
A purge of so-called moderates who apparently favored rebuilding ties with the West followed as the 10-year-old Islamic regime withdrew into its traditional isolationist stance.
Khomeini in March ousted his designated successor, Ayatollah Hussein Ali Montazeri, 64, who had openly criticized the regime's shortcomings and then appointed a 20-member committee to review the succession.
But in the absence of a single personality who could match the patriarch's political and revolutionary authority, there was widespread speculation that Iran may be ruled by a collective leadership in the post-Khomeini era.
Khomeini was born Sept. 23, 1902, the son of a religious leader from a village southwest of Tehran. After a formal Islamic education he taught for years at Qom, the center of Shiite learning in Iran.
His stern morality made him a focus for opposition to the monarchy in Iran. He spent years in exile after he was banished in November 1964, first in Turkey, then in Iraq, where he settled in the Shiite shrine city of Najaf. He later moved to France.
Khomeini emerged in 1978 as the spiritual leader of a burgeoning revolution against the late Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi that was organized through Iran's Shiite clergymen and their followers.
He returned to Tehran in February 1979 after the Shah had fled the country and Khomeini became the supreme head of Iran's Islamic revolution for life.
Khomeini often spoke out against the "world-devouring" governments - the United States and the Soviet Union - that sought to influence Iran. On Nov. 4, 1979, Iranian militants calling themselves followers of Khomeini seized the American embassy and 52 hostages.
By the time the hostages were freed in January 1981, moderates who advocated links with the outside world were ousted and Khomeini's hard-line views had prevailed.