Former Israeli Leader, Nobel Laureate Shimon Peres Dead At 93

Former Israeli president and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Shimon Peres has died at the age of 93 after suffering a major stroke.

Peres was one of the country’s most admired leaders at home and abroad and the last surviving link to Israel’s founding fathers.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu issued a statement expressing “deep personal grief at the passing of the beloved of the nation.”

U.S President Barack Obama called Peres one of the few people “who change the course of human history not just through their role in human events but because they expand our moral imagination.”

German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier credited Peres with shaping the complex German-Israeli relationship in the aftermath of World War II.

“Through his steadfast desire to join the past with the future, Shimon Peres dedicated himself to the unique friendship between Israel and Germany,” Steinmeier said in a statement.

Russian President Vladimir Putin issued a statement expressing admiration for Peres’s “courage and patriotism, his wisdom and vision.”

Peres was born in 1923 in the village of Wiszneiw, Poland, which is now the town of Vishnyeva, Belarus.

Full story: rferl.org