Key takeaways:
- Six people died and more than a dozen were injured in Saturday’s shooting in Kraków’s Main Market Square.
- The 24-year-old attacker died after police shot and arrested him; two officers who stopped him were seriously injured.
- Three people believed to be the attacker’s parents and sister were found dead in an apartment, and officials linked him to their killings.
A 24-year-old gunman who killed six people in Kraków’s historic Main Market Square has died after being shot by police, authorities said early Monday. Officials are investigating Saturday’s attack as a suspected act of far-right terrorism.
The gunman opened fire during the day in the square, a busy tourist and commercial area in the center of Poland’s second-largest city. Police shot and arrested him minutes after the attack began, Al Jazeera reported. He later died in a hospital.
Interior Minister Marcin Kierwiński said the attacker used an automatic rifle and “was fascinated by far-right ideologies,” according to NBC News. The government said he may have been inspired by far-right ideology but gave no further details, Al Jazeera reported.
Justice Minister Waldemar Żurek said the gunman “acted with the aim of seriously intimidating a large number of people, making this a terrorist offence.”
Four women and two men died in the square. Three of the women and one of the men were Polish; the other victims were a man from the United Kingdom and a woman from Austria, authorities said, according to NBC News.
More than a dozen people were injured, including two police officers who stopped the gunman. Both officers were in serious condition, regional official Krzysztof Jan Klęczar said Sunday. They were conscious by Sunday afternoon and remained in the hospital, NBC News reported. Five foreign nationals were among the wounded, from the United Kingdom, Portugal, Russia, Germany and Austria.
Investigators also found three people dead in an apartment in Ostrowiec Świętokrzyskie, about 93 miles northeast of Kraków. The victims were a man and two women believed to be the gunman’s parents and sister, Andrzej Fijołek, deputy inspector of Police National Headquarters, said, according to NBC News. Żurek said Sunday that the suspect faced murder charges in those deaths as well.
Marie-Ange Collaer, who was visiting Kraków with her family from Brussels, described fleeing the shooting. “We literally ran for our lives and managed to hide from the bullets flying around,” she wrote on Facebook, according to NBC News.
Be First to Comment