Egypt holds full-honours military funeral for Hosni Mubarak

Cairo: Egypt was holding a full-honours military funeral on Wednesday for the country's former autocratic President Hosni Mubarak, who was for decades the face of stability in the Middle East but who was ousted from power in the 2011 Arab Spring uprising that swept much of the region.

A few dozen Mubarak supporters, clad in black and carrying posters of the former president, had gathered since morning hours at a mosque complex in an eastern New Cairo neighborhood, where Mubarak's body was brought for the funeral service.

Military pallbearers carried Mubarak's casket wrapped in the Egyptian flag into the mosque for prayers. Outside the sprawling mosque, a military phalanx waited to receive his coffin for burial.

The 91-year-old Mubarak died on Tuesday at a Cairo military hospital from heart and kidney complications, according to medical documents obtained by The Associated Press. He was admitted to hospital on January 21 with intestinal obstruction and underwent surgery, after which he was treated in intensive care.

To the outside world, Mubarak the strongman symbolised so much of Egypt's modern history but his rule of nearly 30 years ended after hundreds of thousands of young Egyptians rallied for 18 days of unprecedented street protests in Cairo's Tahrir Square and elsewhere in 2011, forcing him to step down.