Austrian police are hunting for at least one “heavily armed and dangerous” gunman following an attack in Vienna that left five people dead and more than a dozen injured, the authorities have confirmed.
Interior Minister Karl Nehammer said one of the attackers, who was shot dead by police, was an Islamic State sympathiser. The suspect “was armed with an assault rifle and wearing a fake suicide vest”, Sky News reports.
It remains unclear how many other attackers got away.
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The shooting rampage began at 8pm local time, a few hours before new Covid-19 restrictions came into force. “Many people were out enjoying bars and restaurants which are now closed until the end of November,” says the BBC.
The first shots were fired “outside the main synagogue”, the first of “six locations in central Vienna” to be targeted, Reuters reports.
This morning, police officers are reviewing 20,000 videos of the attack that have been shared with the authorities by members of the public.
People have been asked not to post footage online, but “videos on social media showed at least four gunmen firing what looked like assault rifles indiscriminately as they advanced through the square”, The Times reports.
“One clip showed a gunman in a black hat and a white jacket shooting a bystander outside a shop and then returning to shoot the victim with a pistol.”
A spokesperson for Vienna’s health service “confirmed that they were dealing primarily with gunshot wounds, but also with stab wounds”, says The Guardian.
Two men and two women died in the attack, along with the gunman killed by police. A further seven people have life-threatening injuries, the Austria Press Agency reports, and ten more are in hospital with “moderate to minor injuries”.
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