British author Salman Rushdie, whose writings have made him the target of Iranian death threats, underwent emergency surgery after being stabbed in the neck and abdomen at a literary event in New York state today.
He is alive and still in surgery this evening, local state police said, after earlier being rushed to hospital by helicopter.
A man rushed to the stage at the Chautauqua Institution and attacked Mr Rushdie, 75, as he was being introduced to give a talk on artistic freedom to an audience of hundreds, eyewitnesses said.
A New York State Police trooper providing security at the event took the attacker into custody.
The suspect was identified as Hadi Matar, a 24-year-old man from Fairview, New Jersey, who bought a pass to the event, police said.
"A man jumped up on the stage from I don't know where and started what looked like beating him on the chest, repeated fist strokes into his chest and neck," said Bradley Fisher, who was in the audience.
"People were screaming and crying out and gasping."
Social media footage showed people administering emergency medical care onstage immediately after the attack. The interviewer also suffered a head injury.
Mr Rushdie fell to the floor when the man attacked him, and was then surrounded by a small group of people who held up his legs, seemingly to send more blood to his upper body.
This is according to a witness attending the lecture who asked not to be named.
Mark Sommer, a reporter with Buffalo News, told the BBC that Mr Rushdie was appearing at the literary event at the Chautauqua Institution to discuss the need for asylum for writers.
Thank you to the swift response of @nyspolice & first responders following today's attack of author Salman Rushdie.
— Governor Kathy Hochul (@GovKathyHochul) August 12, 2022
Our thoughts are with Salman & his loved ones following this horrific event. I have directed State Police to further assist however needed in the investigation.
The event had just started at 10.45am local time when a man wearing a mask rushed on stage.
Carl Levan was at the event. He said the venue seats 2,000 people, which was busy as Mr Rushdie is "extremely popular".
The author was being introduced and then, before the interview started, a man ran onto the stage and "repeatedly stabbed Salmon Rushdie", he told BBC News.
A doctor in the audience helped tend to the writer while emergency services arrived, police said.
Henry Reese, the event's moderator, suffered a minor head injury.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said he was appalled that Mr Rushdie was "stabbed while exercising a right we should never cease to defend."
He was at the institution in western New York for a discussion about the United States giving asylum to writers and artists in exile and "as a home for freedom of creative expression," according to the institution's website.
There were no obvious security checks at the Chautauqua Institution, a landmark founded in the 19th century in the small lakeside town of the same name, with staff simply checking people's tickets for admission, attendees said.
"I felt like we needed to have more protection there because Salman Rushdie is not a usual writer," said Anour Rahmani, an Algerian writer and human rights activist who was also in the audience.
"He's a writer with a fatwa against him."
The institution declined to comment on security measures.
The Governor of New York State, Kathy Hochul, said the attack on Salman Rushdie "was also an attack on some of our most sacred values - the free expression of thought."
New York Senator Chuck Schumer said: "This attack is shocking and appalling. It is an attack on freedom of speech and thought, which are two bedrock values of our country and of the Chautauqua Institution.
Harry Potter author JK Rowling, said on Twitter: "Horrifying news. Feeling very sick right now. Let him be ok."
Author Stephen King tweeted: "I hope Salman Rushdie is okay" and fellow novelist Amitav Ghosh said: "I hope Mr Rushdie quickly and fully recovers and the perpetrator experiences full accountability and justice."
Video footage posted on social media showed people rushing to Mr Rushdie's aid after he was attacked at the event in Chautauqua County.
"A most horrible event just happened at #chautauquainstitution - Salman Rushdie was attacked on stage at #chq2022. The amphitheater is evacuated," one witness said on social media.
The author was propelled into the spotlight with his second novel Midnight's Children in 1981, which won international praise and Britain's prestigious Booker Prize for its portrayal of post-independence India.
But his 1988 book The Satanic Verses brought attention beyond his imagination when it sparked a fatwa, or religious decree, calling for his death by Iranian revolutionary leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.
The novel was considered by some Muslims as disrespectful of the Prophet Mohammed.
Mr Rushdie, who was born in India to non-practising Muslims and himself is an atheist, was forced to go underground as a bounty was put on his head - which remains today.
He was granted police protection by the government in Britain, where he was at school and where he made his home, following the murder or attempted murder of his translators and publishers.
I hope Salman Rushdie is okay.
— Stephen King (@StephenKing) August 12, 2022
He spent nearly a decade in hiding, moving houses repeatedly and being unable to tell his children where he lived.
Finally, in 1998, the Iranian government withdrew its support for the death sentence and Mr Rushdie gradually returned to public life, even appearing as himself in the 2001 hit film Bridget Jones's Diary.
However, some hardline groups in Iran regularly renew the call for his murder, saying the fatwa is irrevocable.
Now living in New York, the writer is an advocate of freedom of speech, launching a strong defence of French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo after its staff were gunned down by Islamists in Paris in 2015.
The magazine had published drawings of Mohammed that drew furious reactions from Muslims worldwide.
Threats and boycotts continue against literary events that Rushdie attends, and his knighthood in 2007 sparked protests in Iran and Pakistan, where a government minister said the honour justified suicide bombings.
The fatwa failed to stifle Mr Rushdie's writing, however, and inspired his memoir Joseph Anton, named after his alias while in hiding and written in the third person.
Midnight's Children, which runs to more than 600 pages, has been adapted for the stage and silver screen, and his books have been translated into more than 40 languages.
