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Fidel Castro's Son Commits Suicide After Battling Depression


FILE - Fidel Castro Diaz-Balart, son of Cuba's President Fidel Castro, talks to Argentine human right activist in Havana, Feb. 8, 2007.
FILE - Fidel Castro Diaz-Balart, son of Cuba's President Fidel Castro, talks to Argentine human right activist in Havana, Feb. 8, 2007.

The eldest son of late Cuban revolutionary leader Fidel Castro, Fidel Castro Diaz-Balart, committed suicide Thursday after being treated for months for depression, Cuban state-run media reported.

"Diaz-Balart, who had been attended by a group of doctors for several months due to a state of profound depression, committed suicide this morning," Cubadebate website said.

Castro, 68, also known as "Fidelito" because of how much he looked like his father, had initially been hospitalized for depression and then continued treatment outside of hospital.

A nuclear physicist who studied in the former Soviet Union, he had been working as a scientific counselor to the Cuban Council of State and Vice-president of the Cuban Academy of Sciences at the time of his death.

His father, who built a communist state on the doorstep of the United States during the Cold War, died just over a year ago, on Nov. 26, 2016, aged 90.

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    Reuters

    Reuters is a news agency founded in 1851 and owned by the Thomson Reuters Corporation based in Toronto, Canada. One of the world's largest wire services, it provides financial news as well as international coverage in over 16 languages to more than 1000 newspapers and 750 broadcasters around the globe.

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