Shinzo Abe has been assassinated two years after he resigned as Prime Minister of Japan. Local media reports of cardiac arrest after gunshots at a campaign event.
so. / (Reuters) An attack was carried out on former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Friday morning. According to Japanese media, Abe was shot at around 11:30 a.m. (local time) at a campaign rally in the central Japanese city of Nara. Journalists present reported hearing two loud pops. Abe then collapsed bleeding. The Japanese news channel NHK reported that he was taken to the hospital unconscious. Half an hour after the incident, the broadcaster confirmed cardiac arrest in the 67-year-old.
One suspect – a man aged 40 – was arrested by police at the scene. He is said not to have resisted. The weapon is said to have been a larger firearm rather than a pistol.
Abe served from 2006 to 2007 and then from 2012 to 2020, making him Japan’s longest-serving post-war prime minister. Even after his resignation from office in the summer of 2020, he continued to pull the strings in the background as head of a powerful parliamentary group. He is considered arch-conservative and nationalist. The gun attack is highly unusual in Japan, where acts of violence are very rare. The background to the crime, which happened shortly before the upper house elections on Sunday, July 10, is unclear.