Peter Pellegrini says PM ‘escaped death by a hair’ and urges people to temper their emotions after ‘we crossed a red line’

The Slovakian prime minister, Robert Fico, is in a stable condition but “not out of the woods yet”, officials have said, as the country’s president-elect pleaded for unity after a shooting that laid bare the deep political divisions of recent months.

The shooting, the first major assassination attempt on a European political leader in more than 20 years, sent shockwaves across the continent, with leaders linking the violence to an increasingly febrile and polarised political climate across its countries in the run-up to European parliament elections in June.