Newspaper front pages for the May 16th, 2024

BRATISLAVA-Slovakia’s Prime Minister Robert Fico was battling life-threatening wounds Wednesday after officials said he was shot multiple times in an assassination attempt condemned by European and US leaders. The Dennik N daily said its reporter in the central town of Handlova heard several shots fired and then saw security guards rushing to lift the premier off the ground and into a car.

Outgoing Slovak President Zuzana Caputova told reporters that “police have detained the attacker”. “I am shocked, we are all shocked by the terrible and heinous attack,” she added. Slovak television showed footage of a middle-aged man in jeans being handcuffed on the ground. Separate images from public television RTVS showed a person on a stretcher being taken out of a helicopter and wheeled into a hospital.“Today, after the government meeting in Handlova, there was an assassination attempt” on Fico, the government said in a post on social media. “He is currently being transported by helicopter to Banska Bystrica in a life-threatening condition, because it would take too long to get to Bratislava due to the necessity of an acute intervention,” the government’s statement added. Fico was shot multiple times, said a post on his official Facebook page.

Handlova local hospital director Marta Eckhardtova said “Fico was brought into our hospital and he was treated at our vascular surgery clinic”. She was unable to describe his injuries. Fico, whose Smer-SD party won the general election last September, is a four-time prime minister and a political veteran accused of swaying his country’s foreign policy in favor of the Kremlin.