, Dec. 30 -- former prime minister and icon of democracy, Begum Khaleda Zia, passed away Tuesday morning while under treatment at the capital's Apollo Hospital. She was 80.

The chairperson of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) breathed her last at 6am on Tuesday, according to a A.K.M. Wahiduzzaman, the party's ICT Affairs Secretary and head of its Online Activists Network.

The BNP Media Cell's verified Facebook page has since confirmed it.

Earlier Tarique Rahman and close relatives including Zubaida and Zaima Rahman, had visited Begum Zia at the hospital and left around 1.55am, after which Dr Zahid Hossain, the BNP's standing committee member, had briefed the press that she was passing through "an extremely critical phase."

Begum ...