SINGAPORE plunged into mourning and world leaders united in tribute yesterday after the death of Lee Kuan Yew, the iron-fisted politician who forged a prosperous city-state out of unpromising beginnings.

    His son, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, issued a statement before dawn announcing the passing of his 91-year-old father at Singapore General Hospital following a long illness.

    He declared seven days of national mourning until the former leader is cremated March 29.

    “He fought for our independence, built a nation where there was none, and made us proud to be Singaporeans. We won’t see another like him,” the prime minister said in an emotional televised address.

    In a message of condolences sent to Singapore’s President Tony Tan Keng Yam yesterday, Chinese President Xi Jinping extended condolences to Lee’s family.

    Lee was widely respected by the international community as a strategist and a statesman, he said. Lee was also an old friend of the Chinese people and the founder, pioneer and promoter of China-Singapore relations, and his death is a loss to the people of Singapore and to the international community as well, Xi said.

    U.S. President Barack Obama led world leaders in hailing Lee, who turned a small territory lacking its own natural resources into a world player in finance, trading and shipping — all the while with a heavy political grip that was long decried by rights campaigners.

    “He was a true giant of history who will be remembered for generations to come as the father of modern Singapore and as one of the great strategists of Asian affairs,” Obama said in a statement.

    Tributes also came in from a host of international leaders including U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and the prime ministers of Malaysia, Britain, Japan and Australia.

    Lee, whose health rapidly deteriorated after his wife of 63 years, Kwa Geok Choo, died in 2010, was in hospital for nearly seven weeks with severe pneumonia. Two years before he died, Lee revealed that he had signed an advance medical directive instructing doctors not to use any life-sustaining treatment if he could not be resuscitated.

    He served as prime minister from 1959, when colonial ruler Britain granted self-rule, to 1990, leading Singapore to independence in 1965.

    (SD-Agencies)

    (In-depth on P8)