Japan’s former PM Shinzo Abe assassinated 

Former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, the longest-serving leader of modern Japan, was gunned down on Friday while campaigning for a parliamentary election, shocking a country where guns are tightly controlled and political violence almost unthinkable.

Abe, 67, was pronounced dead around five and a half hours after the shooting in the city of Nara. Police arrested a 41-year-old man and said the weapon was a homemade gun.

“I am simply speechless over the news of Abe’s death,” Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, Abe’s protege, told reporters.

Earlier, as Abe still lay in hospital where doctors tried to revive him, Kishida struggled to keep his emotions in check.

“This attack is an act of brutality that happened during the elections - the very foundation of our democracy - and is absolutely unforgivable,” he said.

Abe had been making a campaign speech outside a train station when two shots rang out. Security officials were then seen tackling a man in a grey T-shirt and beige trousers.

“There was a loud bang and then smoke,” businessman Makoto Ichikawa, who was at the scene, told Reuters. “The first shot, no one knew what was going on, but after the second shot, what looked like special police tackled him.”

Kyodo news service published a photograph of Abe lying face-up on the street by a guardrail, blood on his white shirt. People were crowded around him, one administering heart massage.
NARA, Japan, July 8 (Reuters)