Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico has been shot and wounded in a public assassination attempt. He is currently in the hospital in a life-threatening condition and the gunman arrested. Video below.
Mr Fico was shot as he greeted crowds in front of a cultural community center in the town of Handlova, where a government meeting had been held. There were several shots, before his security detail took him into s nearby car.
The Slovak leader has been taken to hospital and his alleged assailant detained by police.
“A crowd was waiting outside [the cultural centre] and one of them started shooting,” said journalist Juraj Bury, who was inside the building at the time of the attack at about 14:30 (12:30 GMT) in Handlova, about 180km (112 miles) north-east of the capital Bratislava.
A witness told the Dennik N website that she heard three or four shots and saw Mr Fico fall to the ground. She saw wounds to his head and chest.
Three of the prime minister’s guards quickly helped him up from beside a bench and rushed him into a car.
According to local reports, he was airlifted by helicopter to a nearby hospital before he was later flown to another hospital in Banska Bystrica, east of Handlova.
In a message posted later on Mr Fico’s Facebook page, his staff said he was shot a number of times and was “currently in a life-threatening condition”.
In her initial reaction to the shooting, Slovakia’s outgoing president Zuzana Caputova said she was “utterly shocked by today’s brutal” attack on the prime minister.
Mr Fico, 59, returned to power in Slovakia after elections last September, at the head of a populist-nationalist coalition.
