Former U.S. President Donald Trump gestures with a bloodied face after th shooting incident./ Brendan McDermid/Reuters
Donald Trump was hit in the ear in an assassination attempt by a gunman at a campaign rally on Saturday, in a chaotic and shocking incident set to supercharge political tensions ahead of the polarizing US presidential election.
The 78-year-old former president had just started his speech in Butler, Pennsylvania, when the shots rang out. He grabbed his right ear, then brought his hand down to look at it before dropping to his knees behind the podium before Secret Service agents covered him.
He was rushed off stage with blood streaked across his face after the shooting, while the shooter and a bystander were killed and two spectators critically injured.
The Republican candidate raised a defiant fist to the crowd as he was bundled away to safety, and said: "I was shot with a bullet that pierced the upper part of my right ear."
The Trump campaign later said he was "doing well" and appeared to have suffered no major injury having left a local hospital to return to his home in New Jersey.
President Joe Biden, set to face Trump in November's election, said the incident was "sick" and added that there was "no place in America for this kind of violence."
The FBI has identified the gunman, who was shot dead, as 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks of Bethel Park, Pennsylvania, according to reports. His motive remains unknown. The FBI confirmed the shooting was being treated as "an assassination attempt against our former president, Donald Trump."
Panic at the Republican rally after shots fired out./ Brendan McDermid/Reuters
The attack was the first shooting of a U.S. president or major party candidate since the 1981 attempted assassination of Republican President Ronald Reagan.
"It is incredible that such an act can take place in our country," Trump said on social media hours later. "I knew immediately that something was wrong in that I heard a whizzing sound, shots, and immediately felt the bullet ripping through the skin."
Trump's campaign said he would still attend the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee which begins on Monday.
World leaders reacted with shock. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz called the shooting "despicable" and said "such acts of violence threaten democracy."
In neighboring France, President Emmanuel Macron called the assassination a "tragedy for our democracies."
The Chinese foreign ministry said that President Xi Jinping had expressed his condolences to Trump.
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A statement from the UN said secretary general Antonio Guterres "unequivocally condemns this act of political violence." Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said he was "deeply concerned" by the attack.
Russia called on the U.S. to "take stock" of its "policies of incitement to hatred." UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer said: "I am appalled by the shocking scenes at President Trump's rally and we send him and his family our best wishes. Political violence in any form has no place in our societies and my thoughts are with all the victims of this attack."
The U.S. has a history of political violence, and presidents, former presidents and candidates have tight security.
President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in 1963 while riding in his motorcade, and his brother Bobby Kennedy was shot dead in 1968. President Ronald Reagan survived an assassination attempt in 1981.
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