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VIENNA: Two people, including an attacker, were killed in central Vienna on Monday night in what Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz described as a “repulsive terrorist attack.”
Police said there was “one person dead” and several wounded, including a police officer.
Meanwhile, a suspect was “shot and killed by police officers,” Vienna police said on their Twitter account.
Interior Minister Karl Nehammer told the public broadcaster ORF that the operation against the attackers was still underway at around 11 pm local time.
Vienna Mayor Michael Ludwig told local media that 15 people had been taken to the hospital, of which seven were seriously injured.
The attack had been carried out by “several suspects armed with rifles,” police said, adding that there had been “six different shooting sites.”
The first shots were fired around 8 pm on the Seitenstettengasse in the city’s first downtown district.
The shooting began just hours before Austria reimposed a coronavirus lockdown to try to curb the spread of Covid-19, and bars and restaurants welcomed people enjoying one last night of relative freedom.
Kurz said on Twitter that “we are going through difficult hours in our republic.”
“Our police will act decisively against the perpetrators of this repulsive terrorist attack,” he said, adding that “we will never be intimidated by terrorism and we will combat this attack with all means.”
Kurz said that while the police concentrate on the counterterrorism operation, the army will take over the protection of important buildings in Vienna.
Nehammer urged Vienna residents to stay in their homes and stay away from all public places or public transportation.
Frequent sirens and helicopters were heard in the city center as emergency services responded to the attack.
An AFP photographer said a large number of police officers were guarding an area near the city’s famous opera house.
The site of the initial shooting is near a major synagogue.
The president of the Jewish community in Vienna, Oskar Deutsch, said that shots had been fired “in the immediate vicinity” of the Stadttempel synagogue, but added that it is currently unknown whether the synagogue itself has been the target of an attack.
He said the synagogue and office buildings at the same address were closed at the time of the attack.
‘Cowardly act’
“It sounded like firecrackers, then we realized it was gunshots,” said a witness quoted by the public broadcaster ORF.
A shooter had “fired savagely with an automatic weapon” before police arrived and opened fire, the witness added.
Austria had so far been spared the kind of big attacks that have hit other European countries.
French President Emmanuel Macron tweeted that “we French share the shock and pain of the Austrian people.”
“After France, it is a friendly nation that has been attacked,” he added, referring to the murder on Thursday of three people by an attacker armed with a knife in the southern city of Nice and the beheading of a school teacher by a suspected Islamist. on the outskirts of Paris for several days. prior to.
The head of the EU Council, Charles Michel, tweeted that the bloc “strongly condemns this cowardly act.”
And the German Foreign Ministry tweeted that the Austrian reports were “horrifying and disturbing.”
“We cannot give in to hatred that aims to divide our societies,” the ministry added.
Czech police said they had started random checks on the Austrian border.
“The police are carrying out random checks of vehicles and passengers at the border crossings with Austria as a preventive measure in relation to the terrorist attack in Vienna,” the Czech police tweeted.
Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte also “strongly condemned” the shootings.
“There is no place for hatred and violence in our common European home,” he said on Twitter in Italian and German.
