SANTIAGO, Chile - Former dictator Augusto Pinochet, who polarized Chile during his brutal 1973-1990 military rule and spent his old age fighting human rights, fraud and corruption charges, died on Sunday at 91 years old.

File photo showing former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet in August of 2000, while attending a religious service in Santiago. [Reuters]

Thousands of Chileans danced in the streets of the capital while others wept outside the military hospital where he died in a sign of how much Pinochet still divides his country.

Police used water cannon and tear gas to keep revelers from getting too close to the government palace.

Pinochet, a diabetic who had been in frail health for years, had an angioplasty procedure a week ago after suffering a heart attack.

"He died surrounded by his family," said Juan Ignacio Vergara, a doctor at the military hospital. He said Pinochet's health had suddenly deteriorated on Sunday.

Pinochet grabbed power in a U.S.-supported coup in 1973 after military planes bombed the government palace and socialist President Salvador Allende shot himself shortly afterward.

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 to take a middle road -- military honors without a state funeral for Pinochet -- so as not to anger either his supporters or his victims.

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

More than 3,000 people died in political violence under Pinochet's repressive rule, many at the hands of brutal secret police. 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 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 of people celebrating near Plaza Italia, a major intersection near the city center, were students who were not even born when Pinochet stepped down in 1990, and 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 (a sports 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 notorious human rights record, many Chileans loved him, saying he saved the country from Marxism. Supporters say his economic reforms put Chile on track to become a model of political stability during the last 16 years of democracy.

Over a thousand weeping supporters gathered outside the military hospital, singing in broken voices the national anthem and praises to their 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."

Dozens of police stood by outside the hospital, in case of violence.

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.