Sweden's Foreign Minister Anna Lindh became the second prominent Scandinavian politician in two decades to be assassinated when she was stabbed repeatedly while shopping at a shopping centre in the capital Stockholm on Wednesday evening.

Lindh was rushed to the Karolinska Hospital in a critical condition with severe haemorrhaging and liver and stomach injuries. Doctors operated upon her through the night, but the 46 year-old politician failed to make it through.

Lindh was popular not just in Sweden, but throughout the European Union. A trained lawyer, she made her name in the 1980s with her unrelenting campaigns against what she called the environmental sins of big corporations. She was believed to be in line to take over as leader of Sweden's ruling Labour Party and go on to become the country's first woman prime minister.

Her murder came just days before Sweden is to vote on whether to phase out the local currency krone in favour of the euro. Lindh was campaigning actively for the change.

Political leaders across Sweden and Norway condemned the murder, calling it an attack on the open Scandinavian society in which politicians even as high as the prime minister can routinely be seen on the streets, at stores or the cinema and people have unhindered access to their rulers.

"Anna Lindh has left us. The family has lost a mother and wife. Social Democracy has lost one of its most skilful politicians," an emotional Prime Minister Goeran Persson said, IrelandOn-Line reported. "The government has lost a competent politician and a good working colleague. Sweden has lost its face against the world," he said.

Prime Minister Kjell Magne Bondevik of Norway said, "This is a reminder that top politicians even in our peaceful corner of the world can be vulnerable."

The previous such assassination was that of Prime Minister Olof Palme back in 1986. Palme was shot by a lone assailant when walking back home at night with his wife from a cinema theatre in Stockholm. Like Lindh, Palme had no bodyguard. His murder remains unsolved.

In Lindh's case, the police are looking for a man wearing a camouflage jacket, but they say the murder does not seem to be politically motivated.