US senator John McCain, a celebrated war hero known for reaching across the aisle in an increasingly divided America, died Saturday after losing a battle to brain cancer, his office said. He was 81.

"Senator John Sidney McCain III died at 4:28pm on August 25, 2018. With the senator when he passed were his wife Cindy and their family," his office said in a statement.

"At his death, he had served the United States of America faithfully for 60 years."

In July 2017, McCain was diagnosed with glioblastoma, an aggressive form of brain cancer.

Mccain obit

One year of treatment failed to prevent his condition from worsening and on August 24 his family announced that he had chosen to discontinue medical care.

"Sen McCain, thank you for your service," read a sign near the driveway of his home in a rural part of Sedona, Arizona, television footage showed, as a police escort accompanied the hearse that was to carry his body and local residents came bearing flowers for the late political titan.

"My heart is broken. I am so lucky to have lived the adventure of loving this incredible man for 38 years," Cindy McCain wrote on Twitter. "He passed the way he lived, on his own terms, surrounded by the people he loved, in the place he loved best."

After a long-standing rivalry and numerous public clashes between the pair, following the announcement of his death Donald Trump offered his "deepest sympathies and respect" to McCain’s family on Twitter. 

Former President Barack Obama also issued a statement paying tribute to the 2008 Republican nominee.

He wrote: "Few of us have been tested the way John once was, or required to show the kind of courage that he did. But all of us can aspire to the courage to put the greater good above our own. 

The vacancy created by McCain’s death narrowed the Republican majority in the U.S. Senate to 50 seats in the 100-member upper chamber, with Democrats controlling 49 seats. But Republican Arizona Governor Doug Ducey is expected to appoint a member of his own party to succeed McCain.

That could also give Republicans a slight edge in the battle to confirm Brett Kavanaugh to the U.S. Supreme Court in the weeks ahead, as McCain had been too ill to cast any votes this year.

John McCain embraces his wife Cindy following his second presidential debate with Democrat Barack Obama during the 2008 presidential campaignCredit:
 PAUL J. RICHARDS/AFP

Alternatively affable and cantankerous, McCain had been in the public eye since the 1960s, when as a naval aviator he was shot down during the Vietnam War and tortured by his North Vietnamese communist captors during 5-1/2 years as a prisoner.

He was edged out by George W. Bush for the Republican presidential nomination in 2000, but became his party’s White House candidate eight years later. After gambling on political neophyte Sarah Palin as his vice presidential running mate, McCain lost in 2008 to Democrat Barack Obama, who became the first black US president.

McCain, the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, was a frequent critic as well as a target of his fellow Republican, Trump, who was elected president in November 2016.

Still bearing a black eye and scar from surgery, McCain gave a thumbs-down signal in a vote to scuttle a Trump-backed bill that would have repealed the Obamacare healthcare law and increased the number of Americans without health insurance by millions.

Trump was furious about McCain’s vote and frequently referred to it at rallies but without mentioning McCain by name.

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