Madeleine Albright, first female US secretary of state, dies aged 84 | US news

Madeleine Albright, who came to the US as a refugee and made history as the first woman to hold the position of secretary of state, has died of cancer, her family says. She was 84 years-old.

“We are heartbroken to announce that Dr Madeleine Albright, the 64th US secretary of state and the first woman to hold that position, passed away earlier today,” a statement posted on her Twitter account read.

“The cause was cancer. She was surrounded by family and friends. We have lost a loving mother, grandmother, sister, aunt and friend.”

Albright, born Marie Jana Korbelova, became the US’s top diplomat in 1996, and served during the last four years of Bill Clinton’s administration. She was the highest-ranking woman in the history of US government at that time.

She was a young girl when her family fled Prague for London after the Nazis took Czechoslovakia in 1939. She was raised a Catholic, and only decades later discovered that her parents were Jewish and that several of her family members had been murdered in the Holocaust.

More details soon…