Saeb Erekat, the secretary-general of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) Executive Committee and chief Palestinian negotiator, died Tuesday at 65 after contracting COVID-19, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah Movement said in a press statement.

Erekat died while receiving treatment at the Israeli Hadassah Hospital, where he had been treated for about three weeks, after suffering health complications due to his infection with COVID-19, the statement said.

The senior Palestinian official contracted the coronavirus last month. As his condition deteriorated, he was transferred from his West Bank home town of Jericho to the Israeli hospital in mid-October.

The official Palestinian news agency WAFA reported that President Abbas mourned Erekat and ordered flags to half-mast for three days.

Erekat, born in East Jerusalem in 1955, had been the chief Palestinian negotiator since 1996 and previously participated in the Oslo peace agreement signed by the PLO and Israel at the White House in Washington in 1993.  

(With input from Xinhua)