Helmut Kohl, Germany’s ex-chancellor and architect of reunification in 1990, has died at 87, BBC reports.
He died at his house in Ludwigshafen, in the western state of Rhineland-Palatinate, BBC cited Bild newspaper’s report.
Kohl, who led the centre-right Christian Democrats, was the longest-serving chancellor of the 20th Century.
He suffered a bad fall in 2008 and had been using a wheelchair.
Kohl led Germany for 16 years (from 1982 to 1998). He is credited with bringing East and West Germany together after the fall of the Berlin Wall.
Together with his French ally President Francois Mitterrand, he was responsible for the introduction of the euro.
European Commission chief Jean-Claude Juncker has ordered flags at EU institutions to be flown at half-mast.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel, told BBC Kohl’s death filled her with deep sadness.
In the UK, Kohl is remembered for his differences over the EU with the late UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.
In France, he is the German leader who held hands with Mitterrand at a service at the Verdun war memorial in 1984 to mark the 70th anniversary of World War One.
But for Germans he is above all the man who reunified a country divided by the allied powers after World War Two, promising the people of the ex-communist East “flourishing landscapes”, in unity with the richer West.
Source of Images: BBC