Abe, Japan’s longest-serving modern leader, was assassinated on Friday morning while giving a campaign speech in the city of Nara by a 41-year-old unemployed man. The political world as a whole condemned the crime as an attack on democracy itself.
Election campaigning in Japan is expected to continue today, the last day of rallies ahead of polls to elect new members of the upper house, despite the country still reeling from the shock of the assassination of former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe by a gunman.
Abe, Japan’s longest-serving modern leader, was assassinated on Friday morning while giving a campaign speech in the city of Nara by a 41-year-old unemployed man. The political world as a whole condemned the crime as an attack on democracy itself.
Politicians have vowed to continue campaigning ahead of Sunday’s election, which the ruling coalition is expected to win, while Japanese police try to unravel the method and motive of Shinzo Abe’s killer.
The scion of a political family who became Japan’s youngest post-war prime minister, Abe was rushed to a hospital in Nara after the assassination attempt, before being pronounced dead in the late afternoon.
A vehicle believed to be carrying the slain politician’s body left the hospital shortly before 6 a.m. (local time), NHK said, to take it to Abe’s residence in Tokyo.
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