ISLAMABAD, April 23: Ahmad Hassan Alvi, a veteran journalist working for Dawn, died on Monday with his boots on, succumbing to a massive heart attack. He was 66.

Mr Alvi, who has also been a leading trade unionist throughout his career spanning more than 40 years, did his usual work at Dawn, Islamabad, until late evening on Friday and suffered a heart attack in his sleep the next morning that sent him into a coma.

Doctors at Rawalpindi’s Armed Forces Institute of Cardiology said Mr Alvi died in the intensive care unit at around 2am on Monday after he suffered another heart attack from which even the life-support system on which he had lived since Saturday morning could not save him.

Mr Alvi, who leaves behind his wife, a son and two daughters, was buried in the afternoon at Rawalpindi’s New Katarian graveyard. The funeral was attended by a large number of journalists, political activists and friends.

Mr Alvi had survived a heart attack in 1995.

Born on Jan 4, 1941, in then princely state of Charkhari in India's present Uttar Pradesh state, a schoolboy Alvi migrated from nearby Barabanki to Pakistan in 1950 with his father, Mohammad Younis Alvi, an advocate, mother, two brothers and a sister.

His interest in journalism started as a college student in Rawalpindi in the late 1950s when he worked for some local newspapers. He had regular jobs with the Urdu-language dailies Kohistan and Jang before becoming the bureau chief of the daily Musawat, mouthpiece of the Pakistan People's Party, in the heady days of 1970s.

When military ruler Gen Zia closed down Musawat after hanging deposed prime minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, Mr Alvi joined Karachi-based Sindhi daily Hilal-i-Pakistan and later worked for daily Hurriyat, whose closure in the 1980s led to his switchover to Dawn that lasted until his death.

Mr Alvi was one of the most amiable persons in the journalists’ community, but also a steadfast trade unionist who made his mark as president of the Rawalpindi-Islamabad Union of Journalists and an activist of the Pakistan Federal Union of Journalists.

Messages expressing grief over the death and praising Mr Alvi's services as a journalist have been sent by National Assembly Speaker Chaudhry Amir Hussain, Deputy Speaker Sardar Mohammad Yaqub, Information and Broadcasting Minister Mohammad Ali Durrani, etc.