Mother of Syria's Bashar Assad, Aniseh Makhlouf, dies in Damascus at age 86

Syria's regime officials says Aniseh Makhlouf, the mother of Syria's Bashar Assad, has died. She was 86.

A statement on the regime's official Facebook page says Makhlouf, the wife of the late President Hafez Assad, died Saturday in Damascus.

Makhlouf was born in 1930 to a powerful and wealthy family from the coastal province of Latakia. She married Hafez in 1957 and rarely appeared in public after he became president in 1971.

Her nephew, Rami Makhlouf, is one of Syria's most prominent businessmen. He controls the mobile phone network and other lucrative enterprises, and the protesters behind the 2011 uprising saw him as a symbol of corruption.