Iranians reacted with praise and worry Saturday over the attack on novelist Salman Rushdie, the target of a decades-old fatwa by the late Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini calling for his death.

It remains unclear why Rushdie's attacker, identified by police as Hadi Matar of Fairview, New Jersey, stabbed the author as he prepared to speak at an event Friday in western New York. Iran's theocratic government and its state-run media have assigned no motive to the assault.

Friday's knife attack on Salman Rushdie comes more than 33 years after the fatwa against him by Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, in which he sentenced him to death.

Here are key dates in the life of the British writer Salman Rushdie: 

French President Emmanuel Macron said his country stood with Salman Rushdie Friday as the British author underwent surgery after being stabbed at a literary event in the United States.

Iranian ultra-conservative newspaper Kayhan on Saturday hailed the man who stabbed British author Salman Rushdie -- the target of a 1989 Iranian fatwa calling for his death.

Salman Rushdie, who spent years in hiding after an Iranian fatwa ordered his killing, was on a ventilator and could lose an eye following a stabbing attack at a literary event in New York state Friday.

The British author of "The Satanic Verses", which sparked fury among some Muslims who believed it was blasphemous, had to be airlifted to hospital for emergency surgery following the attack.

British Indian author Salman Rushdie is a master of magical realism who captured global attention as the target of a fatwa that forced him into hiding, and which now drives his fierce defense of freedom of speech.

British author Salman Rushdie, whose writings have made him the target of Iranian death threats, was attacked and stabbed in the neck at a literary event on Friday in western New York state.

Police said that a male suspect stormed the stage and attacked Rushdie and an interviewer, with the writer suffering "an apparent stab wound to the neck."

An international LGBT gathering in Taiwan was cancelled Friday after global organizers demanded the self-ruling island's name be removed from the 2025 event -- a move slammed by the government.

The J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles is returning ancient sculptures and other works of art that were illegally exported from Italy, the museum announced Thursday.

The Getty will return a nearly life-size group of Greek terra-cotta sculptures known as "Orpheus and the Sirens," believed to date from the fourth century B.C., according to the museum.