NARA: An altar for flowers installed near the site of the fatal shooting of former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in the western Japan city of Nara was taken down Tuesday.

According to the secretary of Kei Sato, a House of Councillors lawmaker for whom Abe was delivering a stump speech at the time of the incident, some 100,000 people visited the altar through Monday to mourn Abe.

The altar was set up in front of Kintetsu Railway Co.’s Yamato-Saidaiji Station in Nara on the night of July 8, after the shooting earlier that day. People formed lines to pray and lay flowers for Abe.

Removal work began at 8 a.m. Tuesday (11 p.m. Monday GMT) and took about 40 minutes.

“I cried after actually coming to this site,” Sawako Kinoshita, 41, a part-time worker from the western city of Osaka, said. She visited the altar to offer flowers after learning that it would be taken down.

After the removal of the altar, a traffic cone with a sign reading “please take home flowers and offerings, along with your thoughts for the deceased” was placed at the site.

JIJI Press