Warsaw:
Pawel Adamowicz, the mayor of the
Polish city of
Gdansk, has died after being stabbed onstage at a Polish charity event,
Poland's health minister said on Monday.
Adamowicz was attacked while attending the annual Great Orchestra of Christmas charity, a fundraiser where volunteers collect money for medical equipment in hospitals.
Television footage showed a man screaming "Adamowicz is dead!" as he rushed the stage and stabbed the mayor. Speaking on the stage before he was arrested, the man accused the mayor's former party of putting him in prison and said he was tortured.
Doctors operated on Adamowicz for five hours after the incident, Poland's state news agency PAP said.
Politicians across the political spectrum in Poland condemned the stabbing, including members of the ruling nationalist Law and Justice Party (PiS), such as Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki and Interior Minister Joachim Brudzinski. Adamowicz was known as an opponent of PiS.
"I'm expressing great pain for the tragic death due to the criminal attack on mayor Pawel Adamowicz. We express solidarity with his family," Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the country's ruling party leader was quoted as saying in a tweet from the party spokeswoman.
Polish President Andrzej Duda will meet with political party leaders on Monday to organise a march against violence and hatred in the wake of the attack.
Adamowicz stood out for his initiatives to encourage migrants to seek refuge in the northern Polish city, and for his support of a protest campaign defending the rule of law in Poland against PiS efforts to increase its control over the judiciary and other bodies.
Adamowicz was one of Poland's longest-serving mayors, holding his position in Gdansk since 1998. In the 2018 regional election, he won 65 per cent of votes.
The suspect in the killing, which was recorded by people in the crowd, was apprehended. He was released from prison last month after serving a sentence for bank robberies, according to prosecutors.
The assassination triggered an outcry from across the spectrum, with calls to keep the incident from becoming a political issue.
"We don't know what drove this man to attack," Aleksandra Dulkiewicz, a deputy mayor of Gdansk, told reporters. "I ask and beg of you all: let's eliminate this aggression from our political life and society."
The attack comes in an increasingly febrile political climate.
In 2017, a far-right group hung photographs of six Polish opposition lawmakers from a makeshift gallows in a city square in southern Poland. On November 11 the same year, fringe nationalist groups rallied during a march marking on Polish independence day with banners saying "Pure Blood" and "Europe will be white or uninhabited."
Last year to mark the 100th anniversary of Poland regaining independence, Duda and Morawiecki walked with some 200,000 people through central Warsaw, including far-right groups with neo-fascist symbols.