Slovakian Prime Minister Robert Fico is expected to recover after he was shot multiple times in an assassination attempt Wednesday after a government meeting in Handlova.
Fico sustained “life threatening” injuries, his official Facebook account said Wednesday, noting that the “next few hours will decide.”
Slovakian Deputy Prime Minister Tomáš Taraba said in an interview with BBC’s Newshour, however, that while Fico “was heavily injured,” he is “not in a life-threatening situation at this moment” and is expected to survive.
“Fortunately, as far as I know, the operation went well and I guess in the end he will survive,” Taraba said of the five-hour surgery.
One bullet entered Fico’s abdomen and another hit his joints, Taraba said.
But according to Miriam Lapunikova, director of the F. D. Roosevelt University Hospital in Banska Bystrica, where Fico is receiving treatment, the prime minister’s condition is still quite serious.
"At this point his condition is stabilized but is truly very serious, he will be in the intensive care unit," she told reporters.
Taraba noted that Fico was concerned about politically-motivated violence.
"Our prime minister several times mentioned in the past that he was afraid that this would happen," Mr Taraba said in another interview with the BBC's World Tonight programme.
Parliament was sitting at the time of the attack and Slovak media reported that a party colleague of Mr Fico's shouted at opposition MPs, accusing them of stoking the attack.
And Interior Minister Mr [Matus Sutaj] Estok accused the media of contributing to the climate that led to the 59-year-old's shooting, telling a press conference: "Many of you were those who were sowing this hatred."
Mr Estok added that he believed "this assassination [attempt] was politically motivated". (BBC)