The Prime Minister of Denmark, Mette Frederiksen, was attacked today by a man in the center of Copenhagen.
Police said on social media platform X that they had arrested a man and were investigating the incident, but declined to give further details.
Her office said in a statement: ‘Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen was beaten on Friday afternoon in Kultorvet (square, red) in Copenhagen by a man who was subsequently arrested. The Prime Minister is shocked by the incident.
A local, Soren Kjergaard, who works as a barista in the square, watched as security guards escorted the prime minister after the assault.
He claimed that the Prime Minister emerged unharmed from the attack and had no outward signs of damage, although “she seemed a little stressed”.
The Prime Minister of Denmark, Mette Frederiksen, was attacked today by a man in the center of Copenhagen.
Denmark’s Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen speaks with Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy at a Nordic summit in Stockholm, Friday, May 31, 2024.
The attack comes two days before Danes go to the polls in the EU elections and just three weeks after Slovakia’s Prime Minister Robert Fico was seriously injured in an assassination attempt.
Fico, 59, was shot in the abdomen while greeting supporters last month outside a cultural center in the town of Handlova, nearly 140 kilometers northeast of the capital, Bratislava.
Video footage showed the Slovak prime minister approaching people gathered at the barricades and extending his hand to shake their hands as a man stepped forward, extended his arm and fired five bullets before being tackled and arrested.
He later underwent a two-hour surgery to remove dead tissue from his gunshot wounds.
