Tareq Aziz who served as the international voice of Iraq's ousted president Saddam Hussein's regime died Friday in hospital after several years of poor health in jail, a provincial official said.

"Tareq Aziz died in Hussein Teaching Hospital in the city of Nasiriyah where he was brought when his health condition worsened," Adel Abdulhussein al-Dakhili, deputy governor of Dhi Qar province where the ex-foreign minister was jailed, told AFP.