AL QUDS, Jan 9: Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon began breathing on his own on Monday, the first positive sign as doctors tried to bring him out of an induced coma to assess brain damage from a massive stroke.

“He is still connected to respirators that help him but the prime minister is breathing spontaneously,” Shlomo Mor-Yosef, director of Al Quds’ Hadassah hospital, told reporters. “This is the first sign of some sort of activity in his brain.”

The process, which could take days to complete, is critical for determining the extent Sharon’s faculties have been impaired and his chances for survival, though outside experts say there is no guarantee he will awaken from anaesthesia.

Sharon’s deputy, Ehud Olmert, already named acting prime minister, would be expected to keep the job in the run-up to a general election already scheduled for March 28.—Reuters