Trump fires Rex Tillerson as US state secretary

WASHINGTON - US President Donald Trump has sacked Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, replacing him with the director of the CIA, Mike Pompeo.

Thanking Tillerson for his service on Twitter, Trump said the new state secretary would do "a fantastic job".

Mike Pompeo, Director of the CIA, will become our new Secretary of State. He will do a fantastic job! Thank you to Rex Tillerson for his service! Gina Haspel will become the new Director of the CIA, and the first woman so chosen. Congratulations to all!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 13, 2018

Tillerson, a former chief executive of ExxonMobil, was only appointed to the job just over a year ago.

The president also nominated Gina Haspel to become the first woman director of the CIA.

Gina previously oversaw a notoriously brutal CIA ‘black site’ in Thailand in 2002, where men, including Palestinian Abu Zubaydah, were waterboarded and used as a ‘guinea pig’ for torture techniques.