WARSAW, Oct. 19 (Reuters) - An unknown assailant shot dead an assistant to a lawmaker from Poland's main opposition party on Tuesday in an attack its leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski blamed on a "hate campaign" started by Prime Minister Donald Tusk.
Police had said that two workers from the Law and Justice (PiS) party were killed but later corrected that, saying the second, who was knifed by the assailant, was badly wounded and receiving emergency hospital treatment. Police have detained the attacker, who they said was over 60 years old.
"It looks like the assailant had both a gun and a knife. He fired several shots," said Magdalena Zielinska of the Lodz police, adding it was too early to speak of his motives.
Kaczynski, the identical twin brother of Poland’s late president Lech Kaczynski who died in a plane crash in April, said the government of Prime Minister Donald Tusk bore responsibility for the attack.
"What has happened is a result of the hate campaign that has been waged against PiS for some time now," he said, accusing Tusk of starting it.
"Today the government is fully responsible for the security of all our offices and all our workers. If anybody says one more word of hatred towards us, this would amount to a call for killing," Kaczynski added.
Kaczynski, 61, has abandoned all rhetorical restraint towards his political opponents since losing a presidential election in the summer to the candidate of Tusk’s ruling centre-right Civic Platform (PO), Bronislaw Komorowski.
Clearly devastated by his brother’s death in a crash in Russia that also killed 95 other mostly senior Polish officials, Jaroslaw Kaczynski has accused the Tusk government and Moscow of effectively working together to engineer the disaster.
Kaczynski has also refused to have any direct contact with Tusk or President Komorowski in a move political analysts say will erode support for his party among many moderate Poles ahead of next year’s parliamentary election.
But Kaczynski’s uncompromising stance on issues ranging from relations with Russia to in vitro fertilisation, which he strongly opposes, has buttressed support among his core voters, who are mostly older, patriotic-minded, staunchly Roman Catholic Poles.
