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Comatose Sharon's condition worsens: Docs
The condition of former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has worsened, doctors said on Sunday.
The condition of former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has worsened, doctors said on Sunday, more than six months after the hawkish leader fell into a coma after suffering a massive stroke.
"Over the last two days the condition of Sharon has worsened on the level of the kidneys and an examination of the brain showed a deterioration in the cerebral tissue," Orly Levy, a spokeswoman for the Tel Hashomer hospital in Tel Aviv where Sharon is being treated, said.
Another hospital spokeswoman said there was no "immediate threat" to his life. Doctors were "keeping a close eye on him" but were not planning any medical intervention for the moment, she said.
The decline in Sharon's condition came as Israel battles Hezbollah militants in south Lebanon.
He was moved from a Jerusalem hospital in May to the Tel Hashomer hospital for long-term treatment.
The 78-year-old, who left public life as one of Israel's most popular premiers, suffered a massive brain haemorrhage in early January after which he fell into a coma from which he has not emerged.
The stroke signalled a dramatic end to the career of the former general who was on course at the time for re-election as the head of the newly-created Kadima party.
He was succeeded on a temporary basis by his close ally Ehud Olmert who subsequently led the Kadima party to a less than convincing victory in a March general election.
Sharon called the election in November on the same day that he quit his long-time political home in the right-wing Likud party, fed up with battling hardliners who refused to forgive him for unilaterally pulling out of Gaza.
He had garnered a reputation as an arch-hawk before he assumed the premiership in early 2001, before which he had held a several cabinet positions.
At one stage, an official Israeli commission declared him unfit for public office over his role in a massacre of Palestinians in two Beirut refugee camps that was carried out by Christian militiamen during Israel's 1982 invasion of Lebanon.
He was also largely blamed for sparking the second Palestinian uprising with a visit to Jerusalem's disputed Al-Aqsa mosque compound in September 2000.
But he managed to rewrite his reputation in international circles as a key to peace in the Middle East by ordering the first ever evacuation of Jews from occupied Palestinian territory last August.
Sharon's disengagement from Gaza had been expected to allow Olmert to pull tens of thousands of Jewish settlers out of the West Bank. But those plans are on hold as Israel grapples with its crisis on the Lebanese border.
