Bomb attack: Japan’s prime minister was evacuated during an election due to a bomb attack

He Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida has been urgently evacuated this Saturday of an election activity in Wakayama city after an explosion occurred during the visit to Saikazaki port.

The explosion occurred while Kishida was preparing to give an election speech there, for which he was immediately removed from the area by the security services.

Wakayama police reported that it was arrested a 24-year-old man, identified as Ryuji Kimurafrom the Hyogo region (west).

At the time of his arrest, Kimura was carrying a backpack and another metal object, believed to be a second pipe bomb, and is now in custody, although he has refused to testify until his lawyer arrives.

The event came less than a year after former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was assassinated by an ex-soldier who shot him during an election campaign in July 2022.

“There was a huge explosion (…). The police are investigating the details, but I would like to apologize for worrying people and causing them trouble,” Kishida said a few kilometers from the crash site.

The Japanese prime minister was in the port city of Saikazaki to deliver a speech in support of the election campaign of one of his party’s Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) candidates when the attack occurred.

“I saw something being thrown, but I managed to escape and that’s when I heard the explosion,” the prime minister said.which also indicated that despite the attack”they will continue with their electoral acts”, in statements to a senior official of his party, according to the state chain NHK.

Going back to your campaign schedule, an hour and ten minutes after the explosion, Fumio Kishida accurate: “We will hold an important election for our country and we must work together to keep it going.”

Images taken by NHK on the spot showed a person standing about 10 meters from the Prime Minister of Japan throwing a metal pipe at Kishida’s back, who turns with his security personnel and looks at the ground before being hastily evacuated.

At the same time, a person from the public pounced on the young man who had thrown the object and two other security personnel soon approached, managing to throw him to the ground as he wriggled free.

With the president already evacuated, the device explodes, as the suspect drops a second metal tube.

“That something like this happened in the middle of an election campaign that forms the foundation of democracy is regrettable. It is an unforgivable atrocity,” said the ruling party’s head of electoral strategy, Hiroshi Moriyama.