Prime Minister David Cameron tweeted that he was cancelling a planned pro-EU rally in Gibraltar following the shooting.
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The Stronger in Europe camp said it was “suspending all campaigning for the day”, as a police statement said authorities had arrested a 52-year-old man. The identity of the man arrested in relation to the attack has not been released.
In recent weeks she has been campaigning for Britain to remain in the European Union ahead of the country’s June 23 referendum.
Jo Cox MP, 41, was elected to Parliament in May, having spent the previous decade working in some of the world’s most unsafe war zones as former head of policy and head of humanitarian campaigning for Oxfam. Investigators have said that the attack on Cox is most likely a lone incident. She was pronounced dead by a doctor less than an hour later.
Sanjeev Kumar, a shop-owner near a library where Cox was meeting constituents, told BBC he heard of the incident from customers and went out to see Cox lying in a pool of blood on the pavement.
Local MPs and Labour Party colleagues have paid their tributes to he mother-of-two. Ms Cox was praised as a dedicated MP and tireless campaigner locally, nationally and internationally.
Witnesses described “an older man wearing a white baseball cap” who took a gun out of his bag and shot the member of parliament for Batley and Spen twice.
Eyewitness Hichem Bren Abdallah, who was in a cafe next door, said he saw people screaming as they ran down the road towards the library.
A second witness reported three shots, including one possibly to the head.
Chair of the Labour Women’s Network, Cox nominated Jeremy Corbyn for the Labour leadership contest past year, but voted for Blairite candidate Liz Kendall in the end. “This will be devastating for all who knew her and my thoughts now are with her husband Brendan and her children”.
Ms Cox spent 10 years in the aid world, unsafe work which often took her to conflict zones.
She was elected last May, for her home seat of Batley and Spen in West Yorkshire. Boat dweller. Mountain climber. “Thoughts and prayers with her family”. She became the first of her family to graduate from university in 1995. I am totally and utterly sad for her and her family.
“She was nominated in 2009 by the Davos World Economic Forum as a young global leader, and in 2012 received the DEVEX award for her contribution to worldwide development”.
The couple lived on a converted barge moored at Wapping, near London’s Tower Bridge, with their two young children.
“Among Jo’s parliamentary interests are foreign policy, worldwide development, early years education and social isolation”.
In a very short space of time, she brought expertise and passion to the Commons which MPs and ministers will hopefully remember when they take decisions about Syria in future. She was someone who was young and committed to global development, which is what Glenys worked on.
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“In what spare time she has Jo enjoys climbing Scottish munros, running and cycling”.
