BRATISLAVA, May 16. /TASS/. Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico was shot multiple times and doctors performed a five-hour operation on him, the Dennik N newspaper quoted the director of the Roosevelt Hospital in Banska Bystrica where Fico is now staying, Miriam Lapunikova, as saying, adding that he is still in intensive care.

"The operation on Robert Fico lasted five hours. It was performed by two teams of doctors - surgeons and traumatologists. The patient had multiple gun-shot wounds," Lapunikova specified.

Fico, 59, is no longer in a life-threatening condition, Reuters reported citing Lapunikova. Slovak Defense Minister Robert Kalinak, a close ally of Fico, who is in the hospital, confirmed that doctors had managed to stabilize Fico’s condition overnight. "Unfortunately, the condition continues to be very serious," Reuters quoted the minister as saying.

Juraj Cintula, a 71-year-old resident of the Slovak town of Levice, was charged with attempted murder and may face 25 years to life imprisonment, the TA3 TV channel said.

According to the Slovak authorities, the attack was politically motivated.

The shooting was the first attack on a politician in Slovakia’s history and Europe’s first assassination attempt in the past 38 years after Olof Palme, the then Prime Minister of Sweden, was shot dead in downtown Stockholm on February 28, 1986.