STOCKHOLM, Sept 10: Sweden’s Foreign Minister Anna Lindh was stabbed in the chest, stomach and arms by an unidentified man while shopping in Stockholm on Wednesday and was undergoing surgery.

Police said her wounds were not life-threatening and she was conscious when carried into an ambulance on a stretcher. But almost two hours after the attack she was still on the operating table at Stockholm’s Karolinska hospital, her spokesman said.

Tipped as a future prime minister, 46-year-old Lindh is an active campaigner for Sweden to join the euro in a referendum on Sunday. She was shopping in the upmarket NK store when attacked.

Police said they were seeking a 1.8-metre-tall man in an army jacket suspected of carrying out the attack. One local television channel described him as “Swedish looking” and said witnesses saw him throw away a knife near the department store.

It was a shock to the relatively crime-free Nordic nation whose politicians walk around without bodyguards, except for Prime Minister Goran Persson.

In 1986 the nation was traumatised by the assassination of Prime Minister Olof Palme who was shot on his way home from the movies, a few blocks from where Lindh was stab-bed. His attacker was never caught.—Reuters