Slovak PM's life no longer in danger after shooting

Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico's life is no longer in danger following an assassination attempt, Deputy Prime Minister Robert Kalinak said on Sunday.

A lone gunman, who appeared in court Saturday, shot Fico four times and he was at one stage said to be fighting for his life.

"He has emerged from the immediate threat to his life, but his condition remains serious and he requires intensive care," Kalinak, Fico's closest political ally, told reporters.

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The Slovak premier was shot as he was greeting supporters after a government meeting in the central town of Handlova. He underwent a five-hour operation on Wednesday and another on Friday at a hospital in the central city of Banska Bystrica.

"We can consider his condition stable with a positive prognosis," Kalinak said outside the hospital, adding, "We all feel a bit more relaxed now."

Kalinak added that Fico would stay at Banska Bystrica for the moment.

The suspected gunman, identified by Slovak media as 71-year-old poet Juraj Cintula, has been charged with premeditated attempted murder and was ordered to be held in custody at a hearing on Saturday.

Interior Minister Matus Sutaj Estok said that if one of the shots "went just a few centimetres higher, it would have hit the prime minister's liver."

The attempted assassination has highlighted acute political divisions in the country where 59-year-old Fico took office in October after his Smer party won a general election.

He is serving his fourth term as prime minister after campaigning on proposals for peace between Russia and Slovakia's neighbour Ukraine, and to halt military aid to Kyiv, which his government has done.

Fico leads a coalition comprising his Smer party, the centrist HLAS and the small nationalist SNS party.

Kalinak said the government would carry on without Fico "according to the programme he has outlined".

Slovakia was already sharply divided over politics since the 2018 murder of journalist Jan Kuciak and his fiancee.

Kuciak pointed at links between Italian mafia and Fico's then government, and his murder sparked nationwide protests that resulted in Fico's resignation in 2018.

The divisions deepened further with the pandemic and the war in Ukraine.

Following the attack on Fico, outgoing President Zuzana Caputova and her successor Peter Pellegrini, a Fico ally who takes over in June, tried to quell the tensions.

Following a proposal by Caputova and Pellegrini, several parties have suspended campaigning for European Parliament elections scheduled for June.