ALEX Salmond died while opening a bottle of ketchup, according to a witness.
The former Scottish First Minister, 69, collapsed as he had lunch in a crowded room at a conference in North Macedonia on Saturday.
Witness Mark Donfried told Times Radio he watched as Mr Salmond’s Alba party colleague Tasmina Ahmed-Sheikh asked for help to get sauce out of the bottle.
Mr Donfried said: “He came together with Tasmina Ahmed-Sheikh, also from the Alba Party in Scotland, and they were eating.
“Later on Tasmina told me she was having trouble opening the ketchup and she reached over and said, ‘Hey, can you give me a hand?’.
“And he was helping her with that when literally he fell back in his chair, totally out of the blue, without warning.”
The former SNP leader later helped set up the Alba party, which has said a post-mortem examination showed he died of a heart attack.
The Scottish and UK governments are working together to repatriate the body of Mr Salmond, who was Scotland’s first minister between 2007 and 2014.
