Violence in Norway
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Man kills five people with a bow and arrow
The Norwegian police cordon off the crime scene in Kongsberg. Several people are said to have been killed and injured in an attack.
Photo: AP / Hakon Mosvold Larsen
Oslo Ten years after the Breivik attacks, people are attacked in a small Norwegian town. According to police, five of them are dead and two others are injured. The alleged perpetrator can be caught. His motive was initially unclear.
Five people were killed and two others injured in an act of violence in Kongsberg in southern Norway. The Norwegian police announced on Wednesday evening. The alleged individual perpetrator was caught. The act took place around 6.15 p.m. in the center of the city of Kongsberg, which is around 80 kilometers southwest of the capital Oslo. The perpetrator was armed with a bow and arrow – whether he was also carrying other weapons remained open until night. One assumes a lone perpetrator. There is no search for further perpetrators. The situation is under control.
According to the responsible police chief Øyvind Aas, there was a “confrontation” between the suspect and the police officer, but he did not provide any details. However, the suspect was arrested 20 minutes after the police were alerted in the early evening.
The injured were taken to the hospital, said Aas. You would be in the intensive care unit. Aas said he had no evidence that their lives were in danger, however. One of the two is a police officer who was not on duty.
According to the police, the attacks occurred in several locations in the city. The center was cordoned off over a large area. At 6.13 p.m., several people reported to the police that an armed man was moving through the city and shooting people with a bow and arrow, Aas said. Several media reported a supermarket as a place of the action.
The background to the act initially remained unclear. It is too early to say whether there could be a terrorist background. Aas emphasized that he could not answer many questions yet.
A resident of Kongsberg told NTB news agency that she heard the alarm go off in a supermarket. She didn’t think much about it. But then she also heard police cars and ambulances. The police searched garages and backyards in the city center with flashlights in the evening.
Norway’s outgoing Prime Minister Erna Solberg was “shocked” by the fact. “Our thoughts go first of all to those affected and their relatives,” said Solberg late on Wednesday evening at a press conference in Oslo that was called at short notice. She will be replaced by the Social Democrat Jonas Gahr Støre at the head of government on Thursday after her election defeat a month ago. The act did not affect the change of government, said Solberg.
“The reports coming from Kongsberg tonight are horrific,” said Solberg. “The perpetrator committed terrible acts against several people. It’s a very dramatic situation that hits the community in Kongsberg hard. ”It is important to underline that nothing is known about the incident.
Kongsberg’s mayor, Kari Anne Sand, was also stunned. “This is a tragedy for all concerned. Words fail me, ”she told the Norwegian newspaper“ Verdens Gang ”.
The head of government in neighboring Sweden, Stefan Löfven, wrote on Twitter that his thoughts were with the victims and their families. It was a “terrible attack”.
Because of the incident, the police were temporarily armed, the police department announced late in the evening. It is a readiness measure – there are currently no indications of a change in the threat situation in the country. The Norwegian secret service PST was also informed of the incident.
The incident brings back bad memories: Ten years ago Norway suffered the worst terrorist attack in its modern history. On July 22, 2011, right-wing terrorist Anders Behring Breivik detonated a bomb hidden in a white van in the government district of Oslo, killing eight people.
Then he drove to the island of Utøya, about 30 kilometers away, where he pretended to be a police officer and opened fire on the participants in the annual summer camp of the youth organization of the Social Democratic Labor Party.
69 people, mostly teenagers and young adults, were killed on Utøya. Breivik named right-wing extremist and Islamophobic motives for his actions. He was sentenced in August 2012 to the then maximum sentence of 21 years with a minimum imprisonment of ten years.