Polish mayor Pawel Adamowicz dies after stabbing attack

The mayor of the Polish city of Gdansk has died after being stabbed by a knife-wielding attacker in front of hundreds of people at a charity event.

Video footage showed the assailant bursting onto the podium and attacked Pawel Adamowicz, who had been waving sparklers on stage along with others at the fundraiser on Sunday evening.

After knifing the 53-year-old mayor several times, the man turned to the crowd with his arms raised triumphantly. He was quickly apprehended by security guards and arrested.

Paramedics resuscitated Adamowicz at the scene before rushing him to the hospital, where he later died.

Initially, doctors had said there was a slim chance Adamowicz would survive.

“He is in a critical condition … we are battling to save him,” the director of the hospital in Gdansk where the mayor was taken, Jakub Kraszewski, told reporters just before midnight local time.

A Gdansk police spokesperson said the 27-year-old attacker lived in the port city.

In a video recording of the attack posted on YouTube, the suspect was seen seizing the microphone and claiming he had been wrongly jailed by the previous centrist government of the Civic Platform and tortured.

“That’s why Adamowicz dies,” he said before being knocked down to the ground by security.

One witness told broadcaster TVN that the man appeared “happy with what he had done”.