Thousands of people are expected to pay their final respects to former Israeli Prime Minister and President Shimon Peres, who died at the age of 93, the BBC reports.

His coffin will lie in state in front of the parliament building in Jerusalem throughout Thursday.

US President Barack Obama and some of the world’s most powerful figures will attend his funeral on Friday.

Mr Peres was one of the last of a generation of Israeli politicians present at the nation’s birth in 1948.

He won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1994 for his role negotiating the Oslo peace accords with the Palestinians a year earlier, a prize he shared with Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.

Mr Peres had suffered a stroke two weeks ago and died on Wednesday in a hospital near Tel Aviv.

He will receive a state burial at a ceremony on Friday at Mount Herzel Cemetery in Jerusalem.