Many towns and villages in the state virtually shut down in grief as the news spread.

The silence that fell over the state was punctuated by muffled sobs and wails of hundreds of people who rushed to the popular chief minister's camp office, the state secretariat and the party headquarters.

In the rest of the country, viewers sat in front of their television sets watching the unfolding of the tragedy that had left the state and the ruling Congress in a political vacuum.

The news stunned the Congress that lost the leader who had helped strengthen its foothold in the vital south.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who called an emergency meeting in the national capital, Congress president Sonia Gandhi and several union ministers were expected to go to Hyderabad Friday ahead of the state funeral in his home town Pulivendula in Kadapa district.

Calling YSR an 'ideal chief minister who was a role model for other states', the prime minister said he had lost 'a valued colleague on whom I depended for support and ideas.'

A deeply moved Sonia Gandhi said it 'is a huge loss for the party, it is a loss for all of us, his colleagues, for the state of Andhra Pradesh and the country'.

Tributes poured in from all quarters, including from the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) that also lowered its flags in mourning.

The union cabinet met in Delhi and decided that there would be a state funeral and that the tricolour would fly at half mast in Delhi and all state capitals on Thursday and Friday.

Finance Minister K. Rosaiah has taken over as caretaker chief minister.

YSR, who will be given a state funeral, is survived by his wife Vijayalaxmi, MP son Y.S. Jaganmohan Reddy and daughter Sharmila, who reached Hyderabad from Bangalore with her children in early Thursday and was in touch with officers coordinating the rescue operation.

A rescue that was never to be.