Preps under way for military funeral for Mubarak

Egypt prepared for a full-honours military funeral on Wednesday for late leader Hosni Mubarak, who was the autocratic face of stability in the Middle East for nearly 30 years.

Mubarak died on Tuesday, state-run TV announced.

He was 91.

A few dozen Mubarak supporters, clad in black, carried posters and chanted for him in the capital Cairo.

They gathered outside a mosque where the funeral was due to be held in the eastern New Cairo neighborhood.

Mubarak was a stalwart US ally, a bulwark against Islamic militancy and guardian of Egypt's peace with Israel.

But to the hundreds of thousands of young Egyptians who rallied for 18 days of unprecedented street protests in Cairo's Tahrir Square and elsewhere in 2011, Mubarak was a latter-day pharaoh and a symbol of autocratic misrule.

His overthrow, however, plunged the country into years of chaos and uncertainty, and set up a power struggle between the military and the Muslim Brotherhood group that he had long outlawed.