The U.S.-based cleric Fethullah Gulen, who built a powerful Islamic movement in Turkey and beyond but spent his later years mired in accusations of orchestrating an attempted coup against Turkish leader Tayyip Erdogan, has died. He was 83, Reuters reported.

Herkul, a website which publishes Gulen's sermons, said on its X account that Gulen had died on Sunday evening in the U.S. hospital where he was being treated.

Gulen was a one-time ally of Erdogan but they fell out spectacularly, and Erdogan held him responsible for the 2016 attempted coup in which rogue soldiers commandeered warplanes, tanks and helicopters. Some 250 people were killed in the bid to seize power.

Gulen, who had lived in self-imposed exile in the United States since 1999, denied involvement in the putsch.

According to its followers, Gulen's movement - known as "Hizmet" which means "service" in Turkish - seeks to spread a moderate brand of Islam that promotes Western-style education, free markets and interfaith communication.

Since the failed coup, his movement has been systematically dismantled in Turkey and its influence has declined internationally, read the report.

Known to his supporters as Hodjaefendi, or respected teacher, Gulen was born in a village in the eastern Turkish province of Erzurum in 1941. The son of an imam, or Islamic preacher, he studied the Koran from infancy.

In 1959, Gulen was appointed as a mosque imam in the northwestern city of Edirne and began to come to prominence as a preacher in the 1960s in the western province of Izmir, where he set up student dormitories and would go to tea houses to preach.

These student houses marked the start of an informal network which would spread over the following decades through education, business, media and state institutions, giving his supporters extensive influence.

This influence also spread beyond Turkey's borders to the Turkic republics of Central Asia, the Balkans, Africa and the West through a network of schools.

Gulen had been a close ally of Erdogan and his AK Party, but growing tensions in their relationship exploded in December 2013 when corruption investigations targeting ministers and officials close to Erdogan came to light, Reuters reported.

Prosecutors and police from Gulen's Hizmet movement were widely believed to be behind the investigations and an arrest warrant was issued for Gulen in 2014, with his movement designated as a terrorist group two years later.

Soon after the 2016 coup, Erdogan described Gulen's network as traitors and "like a cancer", vowing to root them out wherever they are. Hundreds of schools, companies, media outlets and associations linked to him were shut down and assets seized.

Gulen condemned the coup attempt "in the strongest terms".

"As someone who suffered under multiple military coups during the past five decades, it is especially insulting to be accused of having any link to such an attempt," he said in a statement.

In a crackdown after the failed putsch, which the government said targeted Gulen's followers, at least 77,000 people were arrested and 150,000 state workers including teachers, judges and soldiers suspended under emergency rule, read the report.

Companies and media outlets regarded as linked to Gulen were seized by the state or closed down. The Turkish government said its actions were justified by the gravity of the threat posed to the state by the coup.

Gulen also became an isolated figure within Turkey, reviled by Erdogan's supporters and shunned by the opposition which saw his network as having conspired over decades to undermine the secular foundations of the republic.

Ankara long sought to have him extradited from the United States.

Speaking in his gated compound in Pennsylvania's Pocono Mountains, Gulen said in a 2017 Reuters interview he had no plans to flee the United States to avoid extradition. Even then, he appeared frail, walking with a shuffle and keeping his longtime doctor close at hand.

Gulen had travelled to the United States for medical treatment but remained there as he faced a criminal investigation in Turkey.

A former Indian official charged by the US with directing a murder-for-hire plot has dismissed the allegations, his family said, expressing shock that Vikash Yadav was wanted by the FBI.

Yadav, 39, described the claims as false media reports when he spoke to his cousin, Avinash Yadav, the relative told Reuters on Saturday in their ancestral village about 100 km from the capital New Delhi.

The US Department of Justice charged Yadav with leading an unsuccessful plot to murder Sikh separatist leader Gurpatwant Singh Pannun last year. 

Yadav was an official of India's Research and Analysis Wing spy service, according to the indictment unsealed on Thursday.

India, which has said it was investigating the allegations, said Yadav was no longer a government employee, without saying whether he had been an intelligence officer.

"The family has no information" about him working for the spy agency, Yadav's cousin said in the village of Pranpura in Haryana state. 

"He never mentioned anything about it," despite the two speaking to each other regularly.

"For us he is still working for the CRPF," the federal Central Reserve Police Force, which he joined in 2009, said Avinash Yadav, 28. 

"He told us he is deputy commandant" and was trained as a paratrooper - a relative of Yadav said

The cousin said he did not know where Yadav was but that he lives with his wife and a daughter who was born last year, Reuters reported.

Indian officials have not commented on Yadav's whereabouts. 

The Washington Post, citing American officials, reported on Thursday that Yadav was still in India and that the US was expected to seek his extradition.

His mother, Sudesh Yadav, 65, said she was still in shock. "What can I say? I do not know whether the US government is telling the truth or not."

"He has been working for the country," she said.

The US accuses Yadav of directing another Indian citizen, Nikhil Gupta, who it alleges paid a hitman paid $15,000, to kill Pannun.

But in Pranpura, Yadav's cousin pointed to the family's modest, single-storey house, saying, "Where will so much money come from? Can you see any Audis and Mercedes lined up outside this house?"

Most of the village's nearly 500 families have traditionally sent young men to join the security forces, locals said.

Yadav's father, who died in 2007, was an officer with India's border force till he died in 2007, and his brother works with the police in Haryana, said Avinash Yadav.

Another cousin, Amit Yadav, 41, said Vikash Yadav had been a quiet boy interested in books and athletics and was a national-level marksman.

"Only the government of India and Vikash know what has happened," he said, adding that Indian officials should inform them.

If the government "abandons" a paramilitary officer, Amit Yadav said, "then who will work for them?"

Avinash Yadav said: "We want the Indian government to support us, they should inform us what has happened. Otherwise where will we go?"

Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said on Saturday the death of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar will not halt the "Axis of Resistance" and that Hamas would live on, Reuters reported.

"His loss is undoubtedly painful for the Axis of Resistance, but this front did not cease advancing with the martyrdom of prominent figures," Khamenei said in a statement. "Hamas is alive and will remain alive."

Sinwar, the architect of Hamas' Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel that triggered the war in Gaza, was killed on Wednesday in a gunfight with Israeli forces after a year-long manhunt, and his death was announced on Thursday, read the report.

"He was a shining face of resistance and struggle. With a steely resolve, he stood against the oppressive and aggressive enemy. With wisdom and courage, he dealt them the irreparable blow of October 7 that has been recorded in the history of this region. Then, with honor and pride, he ascended to the heavens of the martyrs," said Khamenei.

The "Axis of Resistance", built up with years of Iranian support, includes Hamas, the Lebanese Hezbollah group, the Houthi movement in Yemen, and various Shi'ite groups in Iraq and Syria. The groups describe themselves as the resistance to Israel and U.S. influence in the Middle East, Reuters reported.

"As always, we will remain by the side of the sincere fighters and combatants, by God's grace and help," Khamenei said.