Swedish Foreign Minister Lindh dies after stabbing
( 2003-09-11 16:29) (Agencies)
Swedish Foreign Minister Anna Lindh died after
prolonged surgery Thursday after being stabbed by an unidentified man in a
Stockholm department store Wednesday, Prime Minister Goran Persson said.
Swedish Foreign
Minister Anna Lindh, left, with her husband Bo Holmberg and their sons
Filip, left, and Daniel, right, in a 1994 file photo. Lindh was taken to
hospital Sept 10, 2003, after being stabbed several times in the arms,
chest and stomach at the NK department store in Stockholm.
[AP] | A leading campaigner for Sweden to join the
euro zone in a referendum Sunday, and tipped as a future prime minister, she was
stabbed in the chest, stomach and arms while shopping.
"I have received with sorrow information that Sweden's Foreign Minister Anna
Lindh died this morning at 5:29 a.m. of her wounds," Persson told a news
conference. "Sweden has lost one of its most important representatives."
Karolinska hospital said in a statement that Lindh died of "massive bleeding
caused by knife wounds to the liver and many of the big blood vessels in the
abdomen."
It is the first political killing in Sweden since the unsolved assassination
of Prime Minister Olof Palme in a city center street in 1986. Except for
Persson, politicians in Sweden rarely have bodyguards to ensure they can keep
close to the electorate -- a policy now likely to be reviewed.
The stabbing took place in the final days of campaigning ahead of a Swedish
referendum Sunday on whether to join the European Union's common currency, the
euro, though it was not clear whether the two events were
linked.
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