Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Swedish official survives stabbing in upscale store
STOCKHOLM, Sweden — Swedish Foreign Minister Anna Lindh, one of the country’s most popular politicians, was stabbed repeatedly Wednesday while shopping at an exclusive department store in downtown Stockholm.
Police said they did not believe the attack was politically motivated, but it stirred memories of the unsolved murder of Prime Minister Olof Palme, who was killed while walking home from a downtown movie theater with his wife in 1986.
Lindh was stabbed in the stomach, chest and arm, and police were searching for a man wearing a camouflage jacket who fled the store.
Doctors early today at the Karolinska Hospital said she was still in surgery that began eight hours earlier.
“The foreign minister’s condition, right now, is somewhat improved, but still critical,” Dr. Goeran Wallin said, adding she had suffered from severe internal bleeding and injuries to her liver and stomach.
Lindh, who is No. 3 in the government, often has been touted as a possible successor to Prime Minister Goeran Persson. Like most Swedish politicians, she did not have a bodyguard.
The attack cast a pall over the country’s coming referendum to decide whether to adopt the euro, and campaigning on the issue was postponed for at least a day. It wasn’t known if Sunday’s referendum vote would be delayed.
Lindh, 46, was inside the Nordiska Kompaniet department store blocks away from the parliament building when she was stabbed Wednesday afternoon, witnesses told The Associated Press.
Hanna Sundberg, who also was shopping at the store, said she saw a man chase Lindh up an escalator from the basement.
“She fell on the floor, and the man was stabbing her in the stomach,” Sundberg said. “When he ran away, he threw the knife away.”
Sundberg ran to Lindh, who cried out, “God, he has stabbed me in the stomach!” Sundberg said she then saw blood.
Persson said security was being re-examined in the wake of the stabbing, which he called an assault on the Scandinavian country’s tradition of openness and the accessibility of its leaders.