JAKARTA, Indonesia — Suharto, a former Indonesian president and Cold War ally of America whose brutal military regime killed hundreds of thousands of left-wing political opponents, died yesterday. He was 86.

Although he oversaw some of the worst bloodshed of the 20th century, Suharto is credited with developing the economy and will be buried with the highest state honors today at the family mausoleum.

President Yudhoyono and others from the country’s political elite prayed over his body. Mr. Yudhoyono declared a week of national mourning and called on Indonesians “to pay their last respects to one of Indonesia’s best sons.”

Suharto loyalists, who run the courts, called for forgiveness and a clearing of his name. But survivors want those responsible for atrocities to be held accountable.

“I cannot understand why I have to forgive Suharto because he never admitted his mistakes,” Putu Oka Sukanta, who spent a decade in prison because of his left-wing sympathies, said.

The bulk of killings occurred in 1965–1966 when alleged communists were rounded up and slain during his rise to power. Estimates for the death toll range from a government figure of 78,000 to 1 million cited by American historians Barbara Harff and Ted Robert Gurr.

Suharto was finally toppled by mass street protests in 1998 at the peak of the 1997-1998 Asian financial crisis.

His departure from office opened the way for democracy in this predominantly Muslim nation of 235 million people, and he withdrew from public life, rarely venturing from his comfortable Jakarta villa.

Suharto ruled with a totalitarian dominance that saw soldiers stationed in every village, instilling a deep fear of authority across this Southeast Asian archipelago that stretches across more than 3,000 miles.

Since being forced from power, Suharto had been in and out of hospitals after strokes caused brain damage and impaired his speech. He died of multiple-organ failure after more than three weeks on life support at a hospital in the capital, Jakarta.

Poor health — and continuing corruption, critics charge — kept him from court after he was chased from office.

Critics say Suharto squandered Indonesia’s vast natural resources of oil, timber and gold, siphoning the nation’s wealth to benefit his cronies, foreign corporations and family like a mafia don.

Others note that Suharto also oversaw decades of economic expansion that made Indonesia the envy of the developing world. Today, nearly a quarter of Indonesians live in poverty, and many long for the Suharto era’s stability, when fuel and rice were affordable.