ISLAMABAD: Pakistan President Arif Alvi, head of state of the second most populous country in the commonwealth of former British colonies, hailed Queen Elizabeth II as a “great and beneficent ruler” following her death Thursday.

Britain’s Queen Elizabeth is dead: Buckingham Palace

Her departure has left an immense vacuum, he said, adding she “would be remembered in golden words in the annals of world history”.

Timeline: the life of Queen Elizabeth, Britain’s longest-reigning monarch