Ariel Sharon still in coma for return home

ISRAEL'S former premier Ariel Sharon was moved home from hospital yesterday, almost five years after a series of strokes left him in a coma.

He was transferred by medical teams from long-term care in a hospital outside Tel Aviv to his home. He remains in a persistent vegetative state and depends on a respirator to breathe.

Security crews erected screens to protect the former Likud leader's dignity as the dawn transfer took place. From the hospital, security guards in SUVs escorted the ambulance to Mr Sharon's family ranch in southern Israel.

There has been no change reported in Mr Sharon's condition, and the move is the result of modern medical thinking that prefers to see long-term patients treated "in the community" rather than in hospitals, said Dr Shlomo Noi, an official from Tel Hashomer Hospital.

While Mr Sharon, 82, showed "minimal responses," there was no indication he would emerge from the coma, Dr Noi added.

"Beyond that, we have only hope," he said.

Mr Sharon became prime minister in 2001 and held the post until his illness in 2006. He notoriously cracked down on the second Palestinian intifada, all but ending it in 2004. The following year, he controversially pulled Israeli troops and settlers out of the Gaza Strip.

He then left Likud to form the centrist Kadima party, built mainly around his leadership. But months later, aged 77, he suffered the strokes that would remove him from public life.