Ex-Peruvian president Alan Garcia has died after shooting himself in the head before police arrested him.
Mr Garcia, 69, shot himself as officers arrived to detain him on Wednesday in connection with a corruption probe.
At 12.45pm UK time, Mr Garcia was rushed to Jose Casimiro Ulloa Hospital in Lima for emergency surgery. He suffered three cardiac arrests and his death was announced at 4.30pm.
A populist firebrand, he served as president twice: between 1985 and 1990 and then 2006 and 2011.
At a news conference before Mr Garcia died, interior minister Carlos Moran said the former president had told police he needed to call his attorney when they arrived at his home in Lima to arrest him.
"He entered his room and closed the door behind him," Mr Moran said. "Within a few minutes, a shot from a firearm was heard, and police forcibly entered the room and found Mr Garcia sitting with a wound in his head."
Prosecutors believed the former president received more than £76,000 from Brazilian construction company Odebrecht.
Mr Garcia had been one of nine people a judge had ordered to be arrested for alleged involvement in bribes distributed by Odebrecht. In 2016, it triggered Latin America's biggest graft scandal when it admitted it had paid kickbacks to politicians across the region to secure lucrative contracts.
Mr Garcia had professed his innocence and said he was being targeted politically.
Last year, Mr Garcia asked Uruguay for political asylum after he was banned from leaving Peru to stop him fleeing or obstructing the investigation. Uruguay rejected the request.
He would have been the third former president in Peru to have been held in the Odebrecht case. Ollanta Humala spent nine months in pre-trial detention over 2017 and 2018 and Pedro Pablo Kuczynski was arrested without charges last week.
Current president Martin Vizcarra said on Twitter that he was "consternated" by Mr Garcia's death, and sent his condolences to his family members.
