Ecuadorian presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio was shot dead while leaving a rally in Quito on August 9, 2023
Ecuadorian presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio was shot dead while leaving a rally in Quito on August 9, 2023 AFP

Ecuador presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio was shot dead Wednesday at an election rally in the nation's capital.

Here is a look at other recent major political assassinations worldwide.

In a drama that sent shock waves through a country with low gun crime, former Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe, who had resigned from his position in 2020 but remained a key political voice, was campaigning for his ruling party when a lone gunman killed him on July 8, 2022.

Abe's accused killer targeted the former leader believing he had ties to the Unification Church, which he resented over massive donations his mother had made to the sect.

Haitian president Jovenel Moise was shot dead in the middle of the night on July 7, 2021 in his private residence in Port-au-Prince by a band of 28 armed men.

Three of the commandos were killed and around 20, including 18 former Colombian soldiers, were arrested.

A US investigation revealed that two men at the head of a Miami security firm had devised a plan to kidnap Moise and replace him with a Haitian-American citizen.

British Labour party politician Jo Cox was shot and stabbed to death by a far-right sympathiser on June 16, 2016 in the street a week before Britons voted in a referendum to leave the European Union.

The 41-year-old was a prominent campaigner for refugee rights. It was first killing of a British politician in office since the 1990 assassination of Ian Gow by the Irish Republican Army.

In September 2022 a man pointed a gun at Argentina Vice President Cristina Kirchner from close range while she greeted supporters gathered outside her home in Buenos Aires, but the weapon failed to fire.

In November the same year in Pakistan, former prime minister Imran Khan was hit by a spray of gunfire during a rally as his open-top truck made its way through a crowded street.

The government said the assassination bid was the work of a lone wolf, with police leaking a "confession" video by the junk-shop owner saying he acted because Khan was against Islam.

In 2018 former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro was stabbed in the abdomen during his successful presidential campaign by an attacker later deemed mentally unfit to stand trial.