Shinzo Abe, the former Prime Minister of Japan, is dead.
Abe suffered a heart failure after being shot during a campaign speech Friday in western Japan, NHK public television said on Friday.
NHK said that Abe was rushed to the hospital after he collapsed on the street, with him holding his chest with his shirt covered in blood. Footage being aired by the broadcast station showed his security guards running toward him to assist him in getting urgent medical attention.
Abe was in Nara campaigning ahead of Sunday’s election for the parliament’s upper house and was giving a speech when people heard a gunshot.
Police arrested a male suspect at the scene on suspicion of attempted murder, NHK said.
Abe was taken to Nara Medical University Hospital for treatment, with national broadcaster NHK saying he was able to speak in the minutes after the attack but subsequently lost consciousness.
He was pronounced dead by the hospital in the afternoon.
“Shinzo Abe was transported to (the hospital) at 12:20 pm. He was in a state of cardiac arrest upon arrival. Resuscitation was administered. However, unfortunately, he died at 5:03 pm,” said Hidetada Fukushima, the hospital’s professor of emergency medicine.
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Abe, 67, a member of the Liberal Democratic Party, stepped down as prime minister in 2020 because he said a chronic health problem had resurfaced.
Some of his major achievements include a Quadrilateral Security Dialogue between Japan, the United States, Australia, and India in 2007, which paved the way for a more secured waterway in the Pacific region.
Abe’s three-day visit to India in August 2007 inaugurated a new bilateral Asian alliance, building on the long history of friendly bilateral relations between India and Japan. This is according to the Associated Press.
