OSLO. At least 4 people were killed, others were injured (including a police officer in the back), by a man armed with a bow and arrow in the Norwegian city of Kongsberg, 80 kilometers from Oslo. The man was arrested. “From the information we have at the moment – the police chief Oeyvind Aas told reporters – the action was carried out by one person only”. The number of injured or their condition has not yet been communicated. The man struck in different parts of the city.
The Norwegian police do not rule out that there is a “terrorist background” behind the attack. The action took place in a residential area in front of some shops, now isolated from the police: it began in a supermarket, Coop Extra on the west side of Kongsberg. From here the murderer stopped in other streets around. There are now dozens of emergency vehicles in the places where the attack took place, including ambulances, police cars and helicopters. The Minister of Justice and Emergency Management, Monica Maeland, informed of the attack, is also following the developments. “‘A tragedy for everyone, there are no words to describe it,” says Kongsberg Mayor Kari Anne Sand. “The crisis unit is up and running, we try to help everyone involved.”
The Norwegian Police Directorate has ordered all officers nationwide to carry firearms as an additional precaution following the bow and arrow attack in the town of Kongsberg. Police in the country are usually not armed. “The police have so far no indication that there is a change in the level of national threat,” the management said in a statement. Bbc news online, while other sources say national assistance resources with bomb squads and emergency response team crews are arriving in Kongsberg.
The attack comes ten years after the worst massacre in Norway: On 22 July 2011, Anders Breivik killed 77 people. The author, a neo-Nazi who claimed to be acting in the name of the fight against multiculturalism and the “Muslim invasion,” first blew up a van bomb outside the government building, killing eight people; and then went to the island of Utoya, where a congress of the youth section of the Labor Party was taking place, began shooting wildly, killing 69 teenagers. Again, according to the tabloid VG, the Norwegian intelligence services have been alerted, but at the moment the police reiterate that it is too early to tell whether it is a terrorist act.
* News being updated