Salman Rushdie, the creator, used to be attacked Friday whilst onstage in Chautauqua, close to Erie in western New York, in line with a couple of eyewitnesses and accounts on social media.
The assault took place at about 10:45 a.m., in a while after Mr. Rushdie took the degree to ship a lecture on the Chautauqua Institution, a group in western New York that gives arts and literary programming all through the summer time.
Mr. Rushdie had simply come onstage and used to be seated in a chair as a team of workers member offered him, when the assailant rushed the degree and assaulted the creator. It used to be now not right away transparent whether or not Mr. Rushdie used to be injured.
Mr. Rushdie spent about 10 years underneath police coverage, dwelling in hiding after Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini of Iran referred to as for his execution in 1989 as a result of his novel “The Satanic Verses” used to be thought to be offensive to Islam. The guide used to be banned in India, the place he used to be born, and he used to be barred from the rustic for greater than a decade.
“There was just one attacker,” mentioned Elisabeth Healey, 75, who used to be within the target audience. “He was dressed in black. He had a loose black garment on. He ran with lightning speed over to him.”