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Salman Rushdie
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TOLGA AKMEN / AFP
The Indian-British author Salman Rushdie has been attacked while appearing in New York.
As the AP news agency reports, a man stormed onto the stage and attacked Rushdie.
Twitter users documented the attack.
The police told the dpa news agency that emergency services had been called to the event venue in western New York state.
Rushdie's The Satanic Verses was banned in Iran in 1988, and many Muslims considered it blasphemous.
Iran's leader at the time, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, issued a fatwa calling for his killing.
A bounty of more than $3 million has been placed on his head.
A Japanese translator was later actually killed.
Rushdie had to go into hiding and was given police protection.
Rushdie was born in the year of Indian independence in 1947 in the metropolis of Mumbai (then Bombay).
He later studied history at King's College, Cambridge.
His breakthrough as an author came with his book Midnight's Children, which won the prestigious Booker Prize in 1981.
hba/AP/Reuters