DHAKA —Bangladesh’s formerprime minister Khaleda ⁠Zia has died at a hospital in the country’s capital, Dhaka, ​after a ‍prolonged illness.

In a statement on Tuesday, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) said Zia died at 6 a.m. local time (00:00 GMT). She was 80 years old.

Zia, the country's first female prime minister who many believed would sweep elections next year to lead her country once again, has died after a prolonged illness while under treatment at Evercare Hospital in Dhaka.

Physicians had said on Monday said her condition was "extremely critical". She was put on life support, but it was not possible to provide multiple treatments at the same time given her age and overall poor health, they said.

Despite her poor health, her party had earlier said that Zia would contest general elections expected in February, the first since a revolution which led to the ousting of Zia's rival, Sheikh Hasina.

Zia became Bangladesh's first female head of government in 1991 after leading her party to victory in the country's first democratic election in 20 years.

Bangladeshi politics had for decades been defined by the bitter feud between the two women, who alternated between government and opposition.

"Our favorite leader is no longer with us. She left us at 6am this morning," Bangladesh Nationalist Party announced on Facebook on Monday.

Crowds gathered outside Evercare Hospital in Dhaka where Zia was warded after news of her death broke. Photographs show police officers trying to stop them from entering the hospital premises.

Zia first came into public attention as the wife of Bangladesh's former president Ziaur Rahman. Following his assassination in a 1981 military coup, Zia entered politics and later rose to lead the BNP.

After a second term in 1996 that lasted just a few weeks, Zia returned to power in 2001, stepping down in October 2006 ahead of a general election.

Her political career had been marred by corruption allegations and a long-standing political rivalry with Awami League leader Hasina.

Zia was jailed for corruption in 2018, under Hasina's administration. Zia denied wrongdoing and said the charges were politically motivated.

She was released from last year, shortly after mass anti-government protests in Bangladesh toppled Hasina, forcing her into exile. The BNP had said in November that Zia would campaign in the upcoming general elections.

The BNP is eyeing a return to power, and if that happens, Zia's son Tarique Rahman is expected to become the country's new leader.

Rahman, 60, had only returned to Bangladesh last week after 17 years in self-imposed exile in London.

Zia had been in hospital for the past month, receiving treatment for kidney damage, heart disease and pneumonia, among other conditions.

During her final days, interim leader Muhammad Yunus had called for the country to pray for Zia, calling her a "source of utmost inspiration for the nation".

Her family members, including Rahman, his wife and his daughter, were by her side in her last moments, BNP said.

Local newspapers paid tribute to the former leader, with Prothom Alo saying she had "earned the epithet of the 'uncompromising leader'"

English-language paper The Daily Star called her a "defining figure of Bangladesh's democratic struggle" and a leader who was "tenacious in political survival and grit".

In November, Hasina was sentenced to death in absentia for her deadly crackdown on the student protesters who toppled her government.

With Hasina now in exile in India, Zia’s death closes a three-decade-long chapter when the two leaders – who came to be known as the ‘battling begums’ – dominated Bangladeshi politics.

Both women fought for democracy, against authoritarianism. But while Zia – unlike Hasina – was never accused of carrying out mass atrocities against critics, she too was a polarizing figure.

Her uncompromising style while in opposition – leading election boycotts and prolonged street movements – combined with recurring allegations of corruption when she was in power, made her a figure who inspired intense loyalty among supporters and equal distrust among her critics.

Khaleda was born on August 15, 1946, in Dinajpur, then part of India’s East Bengal, now northern Bangladesh. She married army officer Ziaur Rahman in 1960 when she was about 15. Rahman rose to prominence after Bangladesh’s war of independence in 1971, later assuming the presidency in 1977 and founding the BNP in 1978.

Zia’s entry into politics was shaped not by ambition but by upheaval.

Her husband was assassinated in an abortive military military in 1981, plunging Bangladesh into deep uncertainty. Rahman – who had stabilized the country after years of coups and counter-coups – left behind a fragile political order.

Zia, then a 35-year-old mother of two, inherited the BNP leadership.

Initially dismissed as a political novice, she proved a formidable opponent, rallying against military dictator Hussain Muhammad Ershad, and later joining forces with Hasina – the daughter of independence leader Sheikh Mujibur Rahman – to remove Ershad in 1990.

The following year, Bangladesh held what was hailed as its first free election and Zia won a surprise victory over Hasina, having gained the support of the country’s largest Islamic ​party, Jamaat-e-Islami.

In doing so, Zia became Bangladesh’s first female prime minister and only the second woman to lead a democratic government of a mainly Muslim ‌nation after Benazir Bhutto, elected to lead Pakistan three years earlier.

Zia replaced the presidential system with a parliamentary one, so that power rested with the prime minister. She also lifted restrictions on foreign investment and made primary education compulsory and free. — Agencies