'I wanted to murder him' - attacker

Poland (AP):

A man wielding a gun and a knife fatally shot one person and seriously wounded another at Poland's main opposition party yesterday amid a desperately bitter, divisive election campaign.

Prime Minister Donald Tusk said the assault appeared to be politically motivated and appealed for calm, urging all political parties to make sure "violence does not become a method in the political struggle."

"Everything suggests that the motivation was of a political nature," Tusk said, calling it a "tragic, senseless assassination" and an "attack of a madman."

Opposition leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski accused Tusk, his main rival, of instigating the attack early Tuesday at a Law and Justice party office in the central city of Lodz.

"The events that took place are the result of a huge hate campaign that has been waged against Law and Justice for a long time," Kaczynski told reporters.

Kaczynski's conservative party is the second most popular in Poland, after Tusk's liberal Civic Platform.

Police disarmed and detained 62-year-old Ryszard C., who they said travelled from his home in the southern city of Czestochowa four days ago to plot the Lodz attack.

In TV footage of the arrest, the gray-haired attacker could be heard saying he "wanted to kill Kaczynski."

"I am against (Law and Justice) and wanted to murder him," the attacker said.

The body of a killed person is carried out from the Law and Justice, party office in Lodz, Poland, yesterday, after a fatal attack. Polish police confirmed that an armed gunman killed one person and wounded another.