SYDNEY, May 23, 2023 (BSS/AFP) - Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said Wednesday he is thinking of the victims of convicted under-age sex offender Rolf Harris, who died earlier this month aged 93.

Australian-born Harris, once one of Britain's best-loved television entertainers, was jailed for five years and nine months in 2014 after being found guilty of a string of cases of abuse against young girls between 1969 and 1986.

Albanese said he was thinking of the people for whom "today will be a difficult day because it will remind them of the trauma that they went through".

"That's who my thoughts are with today," he told a television interviewer.

Harris's family said in a statement on Tuesday that he had died peacefully surrounded by family and friends. They asked for privacy.

He died at his home in Bray, west of London, on May 10 of "metastatic squamous cell carcinoma of neck" and "frailty of old age", according to his death certificate, dated May 23. His body was cremated.