₦airaland Forum

Veteran Republican senator and former presidential nominee John McCain has died at the age of 81.

The Arizona representative died following a battle with an aggressive form of brain cancer, his office confirmed.

A six-term Republican senator, Mr McCain became known as a political maverick willing to stick to his conservative ideals rather than follow party leaders.

Before beginning a 35-year career in Congress, he served as a pilot in the US Navy, enduring a six-year spell in a prisoner of war camp after he was shot down during the Vietnam War.

Mr McCain received the Republican nomination for president during the 2008 election, which he lost to Democratic rival Barack Obama.

In the final months of his life, the ailing senator proved a thorn in the side of Donald Trump, with whom he had clashed in the past, scuppering the president’s attempt to scrap Obamacare.

His steadfast nature provoked both admiration and ire in Congress and both GOP and Democrat lawmakers have paid tribute to Mr McCain.

Mr McCain was born to mother Roberta and father John S McCain Jr, a senior naval officer, on a US military base in the US-governed Panama Canal Zone in 1936.

Following his father and grandfather, who both became four-star admirals, into the forces, he enrolled in the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland.

He served as a pilot based on various aircraft carriers during in the Vietnam War, before he was captured after being shot down on a bombing mission over Hanoi in October 1967.

Over the following six years, Mr McCain was held as a prisoner-of-war, often being tortured and sustaining injuries that left him with life-long physical disabilities.

He was released in 1973 after refusing an early repatriation offer from his captors when they discovered his father was a high-ranking Naval officer.

Mr McCain entered politics in the early 1980s after leaving the Navy and was elected to the House of Representatives in 1983.

He was elected to the Senate in 1987 and failed to gain the Republican nomination for president in 2000, losing out to George W Bush.