French conservative candidate knocked down on campaign trail

Leading French conservative politician Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet was attacked while handing out leaflets for Sunday's parliamentary election on a Paris market on Thursday and briefly lost consciousness, her campaign team said in a statement.

The former environment minister under ex-president Nicolas Sarkozy, at risk of losing her seat at the National Assembly as President Emmanuel Macron's party gears up for a landslide victory, was taken to hospital, the team said.

News agency AFP showed pictures of the politician, widely known in France under the acronym "NKM", being thrown leaflets in the face by a man and lying on the pavement. The man in his fifties called her a "crappy bobo", a derisive term for an urban hipster, AFP said.

The Paris prosecutors' office said a investigation had been opened into the incident, which occurred on a Left Bank street market.

Kosciusko-Morizet, 44, was defeated by Socialist Anne Hidalgo in her bid to become the first female mayor of Paris in 2014.

(This article has not been edited by DNA's editorial team and is auto-generated from an agency feed.)