Mubarak on Life Support

Egypt's Hosni Mubarak is being kept alive by life support after he was rushed from prison to a military hospital in a rapidly worsening condition, officials said. The state news agency MENA said Mubarak was "clinically dead" when he arrived at the hospital, and that doctors used a defibrillator on him several times. It initially said the efforts were not successful. But one official said Mubarak was placed on life support, though he had no further details on his condition. "He is not clinically dead as reported, but his health is deteriorating, and he is in critical condition," a member of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces told CNN.

The developments add further layers to what is threatening to become a new chapter of unrest and political power struggles in Egypt, 16 months after Mubarak was ousted by a popular uprising demanding democracy. The campaign of Mubarak's former prime minister, Ahmed Shafiq, said today he had won Egypt's presidential election, countering the Muslim Brotherhood's claim of victory for its candidate, Mohammed Morsi, whose supporters have gathered by the thousands in Cairo's Tahrir Square, the center of last year's uprising. The election commission is to announce the official final results tomorrow. (More Hosni Mubarak stories.)