The Slovak Prime Minister, the populist Robert Fico, has been injured after suffering an assassination attempt this Wednesday, a spokesman for the Ministry of the Interior confirmed to Reuters. Hospital sources assure that the leader was conscious when he arrived at the Handlová hospital, where the Government had met, about 200 kilometers northeast of Bratislava.
The same sources assure that after treating him for gunshot wounds and stabilizing his vital signs, Fico was transferred to another higher level hospital center. The Ministry of the Interior has not given details about the condition of the injured man.
According to the preliminary report reported by local media, shots were heard in front of the Handlová House of Culture. The prime minister fell to the ground and was taken to a vehicle to be evacuated from the scene and taken to hospital.
The leader had approached to greet people after a government meeting when the shots were fired, according to the newspaper Dennikn. After arresting the attacker, the police cordoned off the area and evacuated the cultural center. The first information indicates that he was hit but does not clarify his condition.
The Operations Center of the Slovak Emergency Medical Service reported that shortly after 2:30 p.m. it received information on the emergency line about a man wounded by a gunshot in Handlová. “We sent a rescue helicopter to the 59-year-old patient. The intervention is still ongoing,” he added, according to that agency.
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Fico returned to power in Slovakia after the parliamentary elections on September 30 with a pro-Russian and anti-Western message. In 2018 he was forced to resign as prime minister after protests that led to the murder of journalist Jan Kuciak and his partner, Martina Kusnirova, when the reporter was investigating connections between people close to Smer, his party, and the Italian mafia and on government corruption scandals.
The country’s president, Zuzana Caputová, regularly in confrontation with Fico, has strongly condemned the attack, calling it “brutal and reckless.” “I’m shocked. I wish Robert Fico a lot of strength to recover from the attack at this critical moment,” she wrote on the social network X.
The president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, has immediately condemned the “vile attack” against Fico. “These types of acts of violence have no place in our society and undermine our democracy, which is our most precious common good,” he said through the social network X. The president of the European Council, Charles Michel, has declared himself stunned. in the face of an unjustifiable attack, he said on the same social network. “Nothing can ever justify violence or these types of attacks,” he stressed, while, like Von der Leyen, he has expressed his support for Fico and his family.
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