Reuters

Santiago (Chile), Dec 12: Former dictator Augusto Pinochet, who polarized Chile during his repressive 1973-1990 military rule and spent his old age fighting human rights, fraud and corruption charges, has died at 91 years old.

Thousands of Chileans danced in the streets of the capital to celebrate his death yesterday and police fired water cannon and tear gas on anti-Pinochet demonstrators who threw metal bars and bottles and lit car-sized bonfires on downtown streets.

At the hospital where Pinochet died, more than a thousand supporters wept, showing how much he still divides his country between those who say he saved Chile from Marxism and those angered because he was never convicted for the murders of some 3,000 government opponents.

''He died surrounded by his family,'' said Juan Ignacio Vergara, a doctor at the military hospital. Pinochet, who had been in frail health for years, had an angioplasty procedure a week ago after suffering a heart attack.

Pinochet, the most notorious of the military leaders who dominated South America through much of the Cold War, grabbed power in a U.S.-supported coup in 1973 after planes bombed the government palace and socialist President Salvador Allende shot himself shortly afterward.

Soon after the coup Pinochet's secret police began torturing and killing leftists and dissidents and his rule eventually became synonymous with human rights abuses, especially disappearances, when opponents were taken into custody and never seen again.

Dilemma over funeral

Planning for Pinochet's funeral created a protocol dilemma for center-left President Michelle Bachelet, whose father died after being tortured in a Pinochet prison and who herself went into exile after being arrested and held in a torture center.

The government decided on a middle road, military honors without a state funeral for Pinochet, so as not to anger his supporters or his victims.

Government spokesman Ricardo Lagos Weber said Pinochet would be cremated and Bachelet's defense minister would attend the funeral.

Police lined the streets near the Escuela Militar military college where the funeral will be held tomorrow.

More than 3,000 people died in political violence under Pinochet's rule. Some 28,000 people were tortured in secret detention centers and hundreds of thousands of Chileans went into exile. Pinochet was accused of dozens of human rights violations -- and more recently of tax fraud and embezzlement related to 27 million dollar stashed in foreign bank accounts. But a long effort to bring him to trial in Chile failed as his defense lawyers argued that he was too ill to face charges.

Among the thousands celebrating near Santiago's Plaza Italia were students who were not born when Pinochet stepped down in 1990, as well as older people who were victims of his dictatorship.

''I'm going to celebrate with my family the death of the tyrant. I even have a bottle of Brazilian cane alcohol we've been saving for 25 years to celebrate this day,'' said Santiago Cavieres, a 75-year-old lawyer.

''I was in the National Stadium (used as a concentration camp in 1973) and from there they sent me to the Chacabuco concentration camp, where I was for eight months. ... Everyone there was tortured,'' he said.

Guillermo Tellier, president of Chile's small Communist Party, said ''he died with a dirty conscience.'' WEEPING SUPPORTERS Despite Pinochet's human rights record, many Chileans loved him, saying he saved the country from Marxism. Supporters believe his economic reforms put Chile on track to become a model of political stability during the last 16 years of democracy.

Weeping supporters outside the military hospital sang the national anthem and praised the deceased general.

''He made mistakes like every human being, but he did a lot for this country,'' said Adriana Malter, a grandmother and shopkeeper. ''This country is the way it is thanks to him.'' Pinochet was under house arrest in connection with one of the rights cases against him for his 91st birthday in November. At the time he issued a statement suggesting he realized his death could be near.

''Today, close to the end of my days, I want to make clear that I hold no rancor toward anybody, that I love my country above all else,'' he said in a statement read by his wife.

In the statement, he accepted ''political responsibility'' for acts committed during his rule.