The Prime Minister of JapanFumio Kishida, was evacuated this Saturday after registering a burst while visiting the port of Saikazaki, in the city of Wakayama, without being injured.
The incident occurred while the president was preparing to give a speech and was immediately withdrawn from the area by the security services, according to a report by the Efe news agency.
Authorities immediately arrested the person allegedly responsible for the launch of what several witnesses described as a cylindrical object that exploded similar to a smoke bomb, according to local media reports reviewed by the agency.
??#NOW – Moment of the explosion in the speech of the Prime Minister of Japan, Fumio Kishida.pic.twitter.com/8uU8wqnr3U
– DATAWORLD (@Datoworld) April 15, 2023
The president was in the place to support the electoral campaign of one of the candidates of his political formation, the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (PLD), when the suspect threw the alleged explosive object in the area, the information specified.
In the images taken by the state chain NHK, a group of policemen can be seen immobilizing the alleged perpetrator, 24, while the rest of the staff fled the area of the incident amid screams.
Until now, the identity of the detainee and the reasons that led him to carry out this action, which could be classified as an attempted attack against the Japanese president, are unknown.
Efe recalls that political speeches on the street are frequent in the Asian nation, where the crime rate is very low.
However, the country still remembers the important images of last July, when former Japanese president Shinzo Abe died after being shot in the back with a homemade firearm while giving an electoral speech in the city of Nara.
Shock over assassination of former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe
It was then learned that the person arrested for the attack, Yamagami Tetsuya, was an unemployed 41-year-old and a former member of the Maritime Self-Defense Forces (Japanese Army), who was “dissatisfied” with the former president and therefore “went to kill him.” .
The source says that an hour after the incident, Kishida resumed his scheduled electoral acts for the day.
“I saw that something was launched, but I was able to escape and at that time I could hear the explosion,” the prime minister told a senior official from his party, in statements collected by NHK.
“We are going to hold important elections for our country, and we must work together to keep them going,” Kishida said in another campaign speech held this Saturday next to the Wakayama railway station, Efe reported.
Efe/OnCuba
