RAMALLAH, August 10, 2008 (AFP) - Palestinians on Sunday mourned the death of poet Mahmud Darwish who gave voice to their decades-old struggle and is widely considered one of the Arab world's greatest writers.

Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas declared three days of official mourning in a televised address after Darwish died on Saturday in a US hospital from complications following open-heart surgery.

'How much does it pain my heart and my soul to announce to the Palestinian people, the Arab and Islamic world, and to everyone who loves peace and freedom, the passing of the star of Palestine,' Abbas said.

He added that Darwish's absence 'will leave a great void in our cultural, political, and national life.'

The 67-year-old penned over two dozen books of poetry and prose in a career spanning nearly five decades that captured the Palestinian experience of war, exile, and the struggle for national self-determination.

He was the the winner of numerous international literary prizes.

The three main Palestinian newspapers ran front-page obituaries of Darwish and Palestinian television broadcast file footage of his poetry recitals and performances of songs inspired by his work.

'The whole world knew Palestine by two names or two symbolic figures, Yasser Arafat and Mahmud Darwish,' Mutawakal Taha, the head of the Palestinian writers' union, told AFP, referring to the legendary leader who died in 2004.

'Now Palestine is without a symbolic figure. It has been orphaned, just as poetry itself has today been orphaned by the passing of our poet.'

Born in 1941 in an Arab village in what is now northern Israel, Darwish and his family fled during the 1948 war that followed the creation of the Jewish state, though they returned to Israel a few years later.

Israeli novelist A. B. Yehoshua eulogised Darwish as his 'friend and rival.'

'Before anything, Mahmud Darwish was a great poet who possessed real poetic power,' the internationally-acclaimed Israeli writer told AFP.

'He quickly became the national Palestinian poet, the poet of the exile and of the refugees.'

The 22-member Cairo-based Arab League said Darwish's death 'deprives the Palestinians and all the Arabs of one of their most noted representatives for contemporary poetry and culture.'

'With his poetry Darwish transcended all the frontiers and broke the chains of narrow patriotism in order to become the voice of Palestine,' said Arab League secretary general Amr Mussa.

Jordan's King Abdullah II sent condolences to Abbas and Darwish's family to express 'deep sorrow over the passing of this great poet,' according to a palace statement.

'(His) poetic masterpieces advocated the just cause of the Palestinian people and expressed their aspirations.'

Darwish had been harshly critical of Israel over the years and was detained several times in the 1960s before going into self-imposed exile in 1970. Over the next 25 years he lived briefly in Paris, Moscow, and several Arab capitals.

A sequence of poetic prose written about his experience of life in Beirut during the Israeli invasion and bombardment of Lebanon in 1982 was translated into English in 1995 under the title 'Memory for Forgetfulness.'

'Poets never die,' wrote Lebanon's parliament speaker Nabih Berri in his letter of condolences.

In 1988, Darwish wrote the official Palestinian declaration of independence and served on the executive committee of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) until 1993, when he resigned in protest at the Oslo autonomy accords.

He had been living in the West Bank town of Ramallah since 1995.

Palestinian officials said they were still in the process of planning his funeral and place of burial.