The leader of Angola's rebel group UNITA, Mr Jonas Savimbi, was killed during fighting with government forces, the state news agency reported today.
Confirming the killing, an Angolan presidential spokesman said Mr Savimbi's body was now in government hands.
"His body will soon be shown to the public," he told the station, adding an official statement had been issued in the Angolan capital Luanda.
The National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA) has been fighting government troops almost non-stop since Angola gained independence from Portugal in 1975.
But the liberation war soon turned into a civil conflict that has raged in the country on and off ever since, and is estimated to have killed more than half a million people, while hundreds of thousands of others are displaced.
A succession of UN peace plans led to elections in September 1992, which UNITA lost. Months afterwards, the country was plunged back into civil war.
AFP