Attack in busy restaurant district of Austrian capital on eve of new Covid lockdown
Vienna’s hospital service said seven people remained in a life-threatening condition. In total, 17 people were being treated in hospitals, with gunshot wounds but also cuts.
Austria’s chancellor, Sebastian Kurz, said Vienna had been the victim of an “abhorrent terror attack” carried out by “very professional perpetrators”. “We will never let ourselves be intimated by terrorism, and will decisively fight these attacks with all means,” he said.
In an early morning televised news conference, Interior Minister Karl Nehammer repeated calls for the public to stay off the streets.
The Vienna police chief, Gerhard Pürstl, said the attacker was killed at 8.09pm. Among those injured was a 28-year-old police officer, who is in hospital but not in a life-threatening condition.
Earlier: Vienna shooting: Austria launches manhunt after deadly ‘terror’ attack
Nehammer said police had shot dead one attacker on Monday night, a man wearing an explosives belt that turned out to be fake. Authorities identified him as an Islamic State sympathizer. Authorities and witnesses were not immediately able to rule out the possibility there had been other gunmen.
Police confirmed on Tuesday that three civilians – two men and a woman – had been killed, and at least 15 others wounded, including a police officer. The national broadcaster ORF later said a fourth civilian, a woman, had died.
Witnesses had described crowds being fired on in bars with automatic rifles on Monday night, as many people took advantage of a last evening out before the start of a nationwide coronavirus curfew.
Six locations were attacked in central Vienna, starting outside the main synagogue, which was closed.
‘ATTACK ON OUR VALUES’
A witness, Vienna rabbi Schlomo Hofmeister, said he could not be certain whether there was more than one shooter.
“I saw one person. Later, I saw videos and I’m not sure it was the same one. I find it very difficult to identify someone in a fraction of a second,” Hofmeister told Reuters television.
“At that moment I also did not pay attention to what he looks like. I was trying to understand what’s happening. I then moved away from the window and called the police.”
Nehammer, the interior minister, said: “We experienced an attack yesterday evening by at least one Islamist terrorist, a situation that we have not had to live through in Austria for decades.”
A police spokesman said at least 1,000 officers were involved in the search.
The government announced three days of national mourning, and a minute’s silence at noon. (1100 GMT)
The editor of Vienna’s Falter newspaper, Florian Klenk, tweeted that the dead assailant was a 20-year-old born in Austria to ethnic Albanian parents from North Macedonia, and known to domestic intelligence agencies as one of 90 Austrian Islamists who aimed to travel to Syria. Klenk did not give a source for his information.
Nehammer said video material had been seized from the home of the known assailant, and police were investigating his potential connections.
