Former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has been shot while giving a campaign speech in western Japan.

Abe was in a discourse on the road when he was shot.

Witnesses heard two noisy bangs joined by smoke that confounded the scene.

41-year old neighborhood man and Defense sources say the suspect worked

Maritime Self Defense Force for a long time until around 2005.

pecialists have distinguished the suspect as Tetsuya Yamagami, 41,

A weapon, depicted  as a shotgun, was recuperated at the scene.

Abe was in the western city of Nara advocating for his party's competitor