Madeleine Albright, the first female Secretary of State of the US, has died, her family announced. She was 84.
Albright died of cancer, her family said in a statement on Wednesday, adding she was "surrounded by family and friends" during the final moment of her life, Xinhua news agency reported.
A native of Prague, then Czechoslovakia, she migrated to the US in 1948 as an 11-year-old refugee, rising to the top of US Foreign Service as she held the post of Secretary of State from 1997 to 2001 during the Bill Clinton administration.
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During her tenure at the State Department, she championed the eastward expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), pushing in particular for the alliance's military intervention -- led by the US in 1999 -- into the conflict in Kosovo between the Serbs and ethnic Albanians.
NATO's 78-day airstrike campaign against then Federal Republic of Yugoslavia extended to the bombardment of the capital city of Belgrade.
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Before becoming the Secretary of State, Albright was the US Ambassador to the United Nations between 1993 and 1997. She was a professor at Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service at the time of her death.
