Slovakia’s populist Prime Minister Robert Fico has been injured in a shooting in a suspected assassination attempt, media reports say.
The leader was in the town of Handlova - 112 miles north of Bratislava - when shots were fired outside the House of Culture. He had been in the town for a government meeting and was meeting supporters at the time.
Slovak police have detained a man in connection with the shooting. Journalists at the scene said several shots were heard, the Associated Press reports, before he fell to the ground. He was then seen being hurried into a car by security.
Deputy speaker of parliament Lubos Blaha confirmed the incident during a session of Parliament and adjourned it until further notice, the Slovak TASR news agency said. The scene remained closed off on Wednesday afternoon.
Reports on TA3, a Slovakian TV station, said that Fico was hit in the stomach after four shots were fired. He was taken to a hospital in Banska Bystrica.
Witnesses at the scene described their horror after seeing the leader shot. One man told Slovak newspaper Dennik N, "I was just going to shake his hand," while a woman said she head "three or four gunshots". She added: "When the shots rang out, I almost became deaf,"
The 59-year-old leads the left wing nationalist Direction Social Democracy party and was re-elected last year, leading the country in a coalition with two other parties. He has however previously served twice between 2006 and 2010, and 2012 to 2018.
His politics are often described as "populist" and he has previously campaigned against Slovakia's sending of arms to Ukraine in the war with Russia. He has also previously been accused of Islamophobia, saying in 2016 that Islam had "no place in Slovakia".
The shooting comes three weeks ahead of crucial European Parliament elections, in which populist and hard-right parties in the 27-nation bloc appear poised to make gains.
Slovakia's major opposition parties, Progressive Slovakia and Freedom and Solidarity, cancelled a planned protest against a controversial government plan to overhaul public broadcasting that they say would give the government full control of public radio and television. Fico has previously been vocal in his dislike of the country's press, calling journalists "corrupt".
Other world leaders have publicly condemned the attack on the PM, with Latvian President Edgars Rinkēvičs posting on X: "Whatever political or other differences there are, violence is completely unacceptable.
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