Former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, who ruled Egypt for 30 years before he was overthrown in a popular uprising, has died at 91, according to state media.

Hosni Mubarak was in the intensive care unit at a hospital in Cairo when he died.

Mubarak was a strongman president who led the Arab world’s most populous country with an iron fist. He was deposed in 2011, and was the second Arab dictator to fall in a wave of popular protests known as the Arab Spring.

The ex-president went into surgery on January 23, according to his son Alaa Mubarak on Twitter.

His son confirmed Mubarak’s death on Twitter.

“Indeed, to ‘Allah we belong and to Allah we shall return.’ My father Hosni Mubarak passed away this morning,” Alaa Mubarak wrote, using a common Muslim prayer.

During his 29 years in power, Hosni Mubarak survived would-be assassins and ill health, crushed a rising Islamist radical movement and maintained the peace pact with neighboring Israel that got his predecessor killed.

The Soviet-trained bomber pilot became one of the leading US allies in the Middle East, receiving tens of billions of dollars in American military aid, and his government’s continued observance of the Camp David accords with Israel was the cornerstone of the so-called “cold peace” between the formerly warring neighbors.

But following a January 2011 revolt in Tunisia that launched the Arab Spring uprisings, demonstrators on the streets of Cairo stood up to riot police, and the army refused to intercede on his behalf. Mubarak handed over power to a military council in February and went into seclusion in the resort town of Sharm el-Sheikh.