HAVANA-- Cuban revolutionary heroine Melba Hernandez, one of two women who accompanied Fidel Castro on his first failed attempt to overthrow the then government led by former President Fulgencio Batista in 1953, passed away Sunday night in Havana at the age of 92, state daily Granma reported Monday.

Hernandez died "as a result of complications associated with diabetes mellitus, a disease she suffered for many years," the daily said, quoting a statement from the Central Committee of Cuba 's Communist Party (PCC).

Born in the town of Cruces, in the former central province of Las Villas, on July 28, 1921, the prominent revolutionary graduated with a degree in law from the University of Havana in 1943.

She participated in the struggle to topple dictator Fulgencio Batista (1952-1958) and was put into prison for her role in the historic, but unsuccessful assault on the Moncada Barracks on July 26, 1953.

After leaving prison, she helped to smuggle out of jail Fidel Castro's writings justifying his revolutionary movement, which were later published under the title "History will absolve me."

Hernandez joined the first National Direction of the Revolutionary Movement on July 26 and left for Mexico, from where she later returned to Cuba to join the Mario Munoz Monroy Third Front of the Rebel Army during its two-year guerrilla war waged in the Sierra Maestra Mountains.

In 1975, she helped found the PCC and went on to sit on its Central Committee and to serve as a deputy in the National Assembly of People's Power (parliament) from 1976 to 1986, and again from 1993.

Hernandez received the honorary titles "Heroine of Labor" and " Heroine of the Republic of Cuba."

In keeping with her wishes, her body will be cremated and her ashes buried at the cemetery of Saint Iphigenia in the eastern province of Santiago de Cuba, alongside the remains of other rebel heroes.