STOCKHOLM (Reuters) – Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico was shot and wounded on Wednesday, becoming the latest European leader to be the target of an assassination attempt.
Slovak media said the shooter was a 71-year-old man but the motive was not immediately clear.
While assassination attempts on leaders in Europe have been relatively infrequent over the past 50 years, a number of prominent European politicians have been targets of attacks in more recent decades.
Below are some of the most high-profile cases.
ANNA LINDH, 2003
Swedish Foreign Minister and leading Social Democrat politician Anna Lindh was fatally wounded in a stabbing at a department store in central Stockholm in September 2003. The assailant was apprehended two weeks later and sentenced to life in prison.
ZORAN DJINDJIC, 2003
Serbian Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic was assassinated in March 2003, in Belgrade, Serbia. Djindjic was a pro-Western politician who had led the ouster of autocrat Slobodan Milosevic in 2000.
JACQUES CHIRAC, 2002
French President Jacques Chirac survived an assassination attempt in July 2002 after an assailant fired a shot at him but missed as he was reviewing troops on Bastille Day.
PIM FORTUYN, 2002
A well-known Dutch politician who was critical of immigration and Islam, Fortuyn was assassinated in May 2002, nine days before the general election. He was shot and killed by an animal rights activist.
WOLFGANG SCHAUBLE, 1990
German politician Wolfgang Schauble was left partly paralysed after being shot three times at an election campaign event only days after German reunification in 1990.
He went on to serve as a member of the German parliament, spanning 50 years. He died last year.
OLOF PALME, 1986
Swedish Social Democrat Prime Minister Olof Palme was assassinated on a street in downtown Stockholm in February 1986 as he walked home with his wife after an evening at a cinema. The suspect, who was convicted in 1988, was eventually acquitted on appeal.
MARGARET THATCHER, 1984
British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, called the “Iron Lady”, narrowly escaped a huge explosion at a hotel she was staying at in Brighton, England. A long-delay bomb had been planted at the hotel ahead of the Conservative Party conference by members of the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA).
Five people were killed in the blast.
POPE JOHN PAUL II, 1981
The Polish-born pope was shot in Saint Peter’s Square in the heart of the Vatican City in May 1981. Suffering two gunshot wounds, he still pulled through and some years later his assailant requested and was granted a pardon by Italian President Carlo Ciampi.
ALDO MORO, 1978
The former prime minister and president of Italy’s Christian Democrats Aldo Moro was kidnapped by members of the far-left militant group the Red Brigades in March 1978, who demanded the freeing of prisoners in exchange for his release. Some two months later, he was found dead in the luggage compartment of a car.
LUIS CARRERO BLANCO, 1973
Shortly after he became Spanish prime minister in the final years before the death of right-wing dictator Francisco Franco, Luis Carrero Blanco was killed in a bombing on a street in Madrid by the Basque nationalist militant group ETA.
(Reporting by Niklas Pollard; editing by Diane Craft)
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