Mass shooting at Norway gay club leaves 2 dead, 21 injured

Two people were killed and 21 injured when a gunman opened fire at a gay bar in Oslo, Norway, early Saturday morning, just hours before the city's annual gay pride parade was set to begin.

"I saw a man arrive with a bag, he picked up a gun and started to shoot," said Olav Roenneberg, a journalist with Norwegian public broadcaster NRK.

The alleged gunman, whose name has not been publicly released, is a 42-year-old Norwegian citizen of Iranian origin, Reuters reports. According to BBC, Oslo police are treating the mass shooting as an act of Islamist terrorism. "There is reason to think that this may be a hate crime," police said. "We are investigating whether the Pride was a target in itself or whether there are other motives."

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

The country's intelligence service said the alleged shooter had a history of mental illness and had been known to them as a "suspected radicalized Islamist" since 2015.

The pride parade was canceled, but hundreds of people marched near the scene of the shooting later Saturday, chanting "We're here, we're queer, we won't disappear!"