FRANCE: Mr Bertrand Delanoë, the socialist mayor of Paris, is recovering in hospital after being stabbed in the stomach early yesterday. Doctors said he would spend eight days in hospital.
Mr Delanoë (52) had been greeting some of the 6,000 people who took advantage of the nuit blanche (sleepless night) party organised by him to visit Paris City Hall. At 2.30 a.m., in a crowded reception room, the mayor suddenly fell over. "I'm in pain. I've been stabbed," he told Ms Anne-Sylvie Schneider, his spokeswoman, who was beside him. An ambulance rushed Mr Delanoë to la Pitié Salpêtrière Hospital. Surgeons spent over three hours mending his wounded stomach and digestive tube.
The mayor's attacker, Mr Azedine Berkane (39) from the immigrant suburb of Bobigny, north-east of Paris, is in custody. He has close to a dozen convictions for drug dealing and armed robbery, and explained the attack saying, "I don't like politicians - especially homosexuals." Mr Delanoë made his homosexuality public several years ago.
President Jacques Chirac, who escaped an assassination attempt by an extreme right-wing militant on July 14th, said he was scandalised by this "mad gesture".
Prime Minister Mr Jean-Pierre Raffarin sent his "personal sympathy" and said the attack showed the need to improve security and respect for elected officials.
The socialist leader, Mr François Hollande, said the party expressed its "solidarity and gratitude" to Mr Delanoë, who had undergone "a terrible shock that leaves psychological scars". Mr Delanoë remained conscious until he went into the operating room. "He had only one concern," Ms Schneider said, "that the nuit blanche continue, especially at City Hall."
Several hundred thousand people participated in the all-night celebration, the first of its kind. Thirty events took place across the capital, including a discotheque on a boat turned on the Seine, bathed in red light. The artist Sophie Calle told stories on top of the Eiffel Tower, then slept there. There were guided tours of the underground catacombs, where the bones of long-dead Parisians are stacked.
The mayor has won the affection of many Parisians with original events like the ersatz beach created on the banks of the Seine in August, and this weekend's party. The attempt on his life is bound to make him even more popular. The socialist party is in disarray after defeat in this year's presidential and legislative elections, and Mr Delanoë is considered a possible candidate for the presidency in 2007.