VIENNA (Reuters) - Helmut Zilk, a popular former Social Democratic mayor of Vienna who was seriously injured in the 1990s by a letter bomb sent by a right-wing extremist, died on Friday of heart failure at age 81.
Vienna's Wilhelminen hospital said Zilk died after returning ill from a vacation in Portugal.
He lost two fingers on one hand when he opened a booby-trapped letter at his home in 1993, near the end of his 10-year tenure as mayor of the Austrian capital.
Zilk was the most prominent victim in a letter-bomb campaign by a far-right extremist, Franz Fuchs, targeting Austrians who backed or represented multicultural values and minority rights.
Fuchs was arrested after four Roma people were killed in a bomb attack in 1995, and he later committed suicide in prison.
Zilk was married to Austrian stage star Dagmar Koller.
(Writing by Mark Heinrich; editing by Jon Boyle)
