Novelist Salman Rushdie on ventilator after New York stabbing - Reuters.com

NEW YORK, Aug 12 (Reuters) - Salman Rushdie, the Indian-born novelist who spent years in hiding after Iran urged Muslims to kill him because of his writing, was stabbed in the neck and torso onstage at a lecture in New York state on Friday and airlifted to a hospital, police said.

After hours of surgery, Rushdie was on a ventilator and unable to speak on Friday evening after an attack condemned by writers and politicians around the world as an assault on the freedom of expression.

A doctor in the audience helped tend to Rushdie while emergency services arrived, police said.

The Iranian government said in 1998 it would no longer back the fatwa, and Rushdie has lived relatively openly in recent years.

A general view shows UPMC Hamot Surgery Center, where novelist Salman Rushdie is receiving treatment after the attack, in Erie, Pennsylvania, U.S., August 12, 2022.

Rushdie published a memoir in 2012 about his cloistered, secretive life under the fatwa called "Joseph Anton," the pseudonym he used while in British police protection.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said he was appalled that Rushdie was "stabbed while exercising a right we should never cease to defend.".

"I felt like we needed to have more protection there because Salman Rushdie is not a usual writer," said Anour Rahmani, an Algerian writer and human rights activist who was in the audience.

Michael Hill, the institution's president, said at a news conference they had a practice of working with state and local police to provide event security.

PEN America, an advocacy group for freedom of expression of which Rushdie is a former president, said it was "reeling from shock and horror" at what it called an unprecedented attack on a writer in the United States.

"Salman Rushdie has been targeted for his words for decades but has never flinched nor faltered," Suzanne Nossel, PEN's chief executive, said in the statement.

Earlier in the morning, Rushdie had emailed her to help with relocating Ukrainian writers seeking refuge, she said.