‘Brazil’s Donald Trump’ presidential candidate stabbed in street, by Anthony Broadie.

Brazil’s front-running far-right presidential candidate Jair Bolsonaro is in serious but stable condition in hospital following “successful” surgery after he was stabbed while campaigning on Thursday, his running mate said. …

TV images show Bolsonaro being carried on someone’s shoulders in the middle of a crushing crowd of cheering supporters on one of the city’s main streets when a knife was seen raised above heads just before it plunged into the candidate’s body. …

Flavio Bolsonaro, the candidate’s son, wrote on Twitter that his father had been wounded in the liver, lung and intestine. “He lost a lot of blood, arrived at the hospital … almost dead. He appears to have stabilized now,” he said. …

The attack on Bolsonaro is a dramatic twist in what is already Brazil’s most unpredictable election since the country’s return to democracy three decades ago. Corruption investigations have jailed scores of powerful businessmen and politicians, and alienated infuriated voters. …

Bolsonaro, who has spent nearly three decades in Congress, is a law-and-order candidate who routinely says that Brazilian police should kill suspected drug traffickers and other criminals at will. He has openly praised Brazil’s military dictatorship and in the past said it should have killed more people.