Right-wing Dutch politician Mr Pim Fortuyn has been shot dead by a lone gunman. The killing came just days before elections that were predicted to sweep his party into a position of national influence.
Mr Fortuyn's death immediately halted campaigning as party leaders considered postponing parliamentary elections set for May 15th.
Hours after the shooting, Mr Fortuyn's body lay where he was shot, covered with a white sheet, near the entrance to the building where he had just given a radio interview. Paramedics ripped open his shirt, bandaged his bleeding head and pumped his chest to try to revive him.
"I'm not going to die soon. I'm going to live to be 87," he said in the radio interview he had just concluded in Hilversum, near Amsterdam.
Police said they arrested a suspect whom they described as a "white man of Dutch nationality" but had not established an identity or a motive. Public prosecutor Mr Theo Hofstee said the suspect refused to give a statement and will be arraigned in a few days.
Mr Fortuyn's supporters broke into the parking garage of Binnenhof, the Dutch parliament in The Hague, waving posters of the murdered leader. At least two cars were set on fire.
Mr Fortuyn (54), a former academic and columnist who led an openly gay lifestyle, was shot in the head, neck and chest.
The attack came nine days before national elections, and opinion polls had predicted his new party, created earlier this year, would be one of the largest parties in parliament.
"After this assassination, Pim Fortuyn is gone," said the Prime Minister, Mr Wim Kok, in The Hague after breaking off a campaign engagement.
"Respect for each other means you fight with words, not bullets. What has happened here is indescribable," Mr Kok said.
"I am broken," he added in a televised interview, warning of a threat to Dutch democracy. "For God's sake let's remain calm."
Mr Fortuyn had dictated debate during the campaign with verbal attacks on the country's growing Muslim population and strident criticism of the national government.
He called Islam a "backward" culture and said the Netherlands should reconsider its law guaranteeing freedom from discrimination.
"Pim was not an extremist. He wanted to do something for the working class to save us from taxes and do something for the normal people and not for the immigrants," said one protester outside the parliament.
Mr Fortuyn was widely dismissed as a serious political threat until last March, when his newly formed party won 35 per cent of the vote in local elections in Rotterdam, a city with a large immigrant population.
Following his lead, other parties promised to re-examine their country's generous asylum policy. About one person in eight comes from a non-Dutch background, and nearly half of those come from Islamic countries.
Mr Fortuyn had recently expressed fears for his safety. Mr Harry Mens, a close friend who talked with Mr Fortuyn on the phone in the morning, told Dutch television Mr Fortuyn was worried about threats made in recent days.
Mr Fortuyn's rise mirrored a right-wing resurgence in several European countries, lately highlighted by Mr Jean-Marie Le Pen's surprise success in France.
However, Mr Fortuyn had dissociated himself from Mr Le Pen and other European extreme-right leaders.
Politicians across Europe have condemned the killing. British Prime Minister Mr Tony Blair cancelled a planned trip to the Netherlands.