Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico suffered life-threatening injuries on Wednesday when he was shot and wounded in an attempted assassination that stunned his small Central European nation and drew a chorus of international condemnation.
Slovak media said the shooter was a 71-year-old man but the motive was not immediately clear.
Slovakia, a member of NATO and the European Union, has little history of political violence. Russia’s President Vladimir Putin and U.S. President Joe Biden joined Slovakia’s EU partners in expressing shock and condemnation of the shooting.
Fico, 59, was rushed to hospital in the central Slovak town of Handlova where he had been chairing a government meeting. He was then transported by helicopter to regional capital Banska Bystrica for urgent treatment, it said, adding that his condition was too serious for him to be taken to Bratislava.
A Reuters witness heard three or four shots as Fico exited a building to shake hands with a crowd of people who had been waiting to greet him. Police then wrestled a man to the ground.
“An assassination (attempt) on Prime Minister Robert Fico was carried out today at the government’s off-site meeting in Handlova,” the government office said in a statement.
Slovak news media reported the shooter was a former security guard at a shopping mall, an author of three collections of poetry and a member of the Slovak Society of Writers. Atkuality.sk cited his son as saying his father was the legal holder of a gun licence.
