In a statement on Buzzfeed.com, Editor-in-Chief Ben Smith paid tribute to the award-winning journalist, who joined the website last year.

“Michael was a great, fearless journalist with an incredible instinct for the story”, Smith writes “and a gift for finding ways to make his readers care about anything he covered from wars to politicians.”

Hastings previously wrote for the Rolling Stones where in a 2010 profile interview  he quoted US four-star General Stanley McChrystal as criticising the Obama administration.

Previously head of operations in Afghanistan, the general resigned the day after the publication of "The Runaway General", which had included his criticisms of Vice President Joe Biden’s "shortsighted” policies.

The article went on to a win a George Polk award.

Hastings was author of two books on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, "I Lost My Love in Baghdad” and “The Operators”.