United Arab Emirates President Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan, a pro-Western modernizer who had aligned the Gulf Arab state closer to the United States and its allies, died on Friday.

The Ministry of Presidential Affairs announced the death of Khalifa, who was also ruler of the UAE's richest emirate, Abu Dhabi, but gave no details.

Khalifa, born in 1948, had rarely been seen in public since suffering a stroke in 2014.