Rushdie was seriously injured when he was attacked with a knife during a lecture in northwest New York on Friday.

On Saturday, several Iranian newspapers praised the suspected perpetrator.

"A thousand cheers... to the brave and dutiful person who attacked the apostate and evil Salman Rushdie," writes the newspaper Kayhan, whose editor-in-chief has been appointed by Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

The Asr News news site quoted Khamenei as saying that the "arrow" fired by Ayatollah Rudollah Khomeini (who issued a fatwa against Rushdie in 1989) "will one day hit its target."

The headline of the hard-line newspaper Vatan Emrooz read: "Knife in Salman Rushdie's neck", while the newspaper The Khosasan Daily wrote: "Satan on his way to hell".

Treated in a respirator

Rushdie's agent Andrew Wylie announced during the night of Saturday that the author is being cared for on a ventilator since the attack and will probably lose an eye.

He added that the nerves in one arm are damaged and that the liver has been punctured.

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Salman Rushdie has lived under death threats since the late 80s.

Photo: TT