Shinzo Abe: what we know so far about killing of former Japanese PM

Sixty-seven-year-old died following shooting in Nara in western Japan, and a suspect has been detained.

• Japan’s former prime minister Shinzo Abe has died after being shot while giving a speech in the western city of Nara on Friday.
• Abe appeared to be in a state of cardiac arrest when he was airlifted to hospital after the shooting. Emergency services said he had been wounded on the right side of his neck and left clavicle.
• Police arrested a 42-year-old man at the scene. He has been named as Tetsuya Yamagami, from Nara. He is a former member of the maritime self-defence force, according to Fuji TV. He reportedly left the force in 2005.

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• Media reports quoted police as saying that the weapon thought to have been used in the attack was homemade. Japan’s gun-ownership restrictions do not allow private citizens to have handguns, and licensed hunters may own only rifles.
• Abe, Japan’s longest-serving prime minister, had been in Nara giving a campaign speech ahead of this Sunday’s upper house elections when he was shot. All parties suspended campaigning after the shooting.

• Japanese politicians reacted with extreme shock to the shooting. “I am incredibly shocked,” Tokyo governor Yuriko Koike told a regular news conference before Abe’s death was announced, fighting back tears and sniffling audibly. “No matter the reason, such a heinous act is absolutely unforgivable. It is an affront against democracy.”

• Japan’s prime minister, Fumio Kishida, hastily returned to Tokyo from campaign events around the country. He called the shooting “dastardly and barbaric”.
• Attacks on politicians in Japan are unusual. There have been only a handful in the last half century, most notably in 2007 when the mayor of Nagasaki was shot and killed by a gangster – an incident that resulted in still further tightening of gun regulations.
• The last time a former prime minister was killed was in 1936 during Japan’s radical prewar militarism.