Terror: Shooting Near Vienna Shul
An attack by multiple gunmen in Vienna left at least one person dead and several others wounded late Monday, officials said. One attacker was killed in what security officials were calling a “terror attack.” • Full Story
Yeshiva World News
An attack by multiple gunmen in Vienna left at least one person dead and several others wounded late Monday, officials said. One attacker was killed in what security officials were calling a “terror attack.”
Police in the Austrian capital said several shots were fired shortly after 8 p.m. (1900 GMT) in a lively street in the city center and that there were six different shooting locations. Austria’s top security official said authorities believe there were several gunmen involved and that a police operation was still ongoing.
“It appears to have been a terror attack,” Interior Minister Karl Nehammer told public broadcaster ORF, adding that the perpetrators were armed with rifles. “I can confirm that there were several injured and that there are probably also deaths among them.”
Several suspected perpetrators of what the Austrian government is calling a terror attack in Vienna are on the loose and a manhunt is underway, Interior Minister Karl Nehammer said on Monday, calling the attackers “heavily armed and dangerous.”
“We have brought several special forces units together that are now searching for the presumed terrorists. I am therefore not limiting it to an area of Vienna because these are mobile perpetrators,” Nehammer told broadcaster ORF, urging the public to stay indoors until the all-clear is given
Vienna police tweeted: “One deceased person, several injured (1 officer included).” They added that one suspect had been shot and killed by police officers.
The Austria Press Agency earlier quoted ambulance service spokesman Daniel Melcher saying there were several dead and injured, though he was unable to provide a number yet.
Earlier reports had suggested that the nearby Stadttempel synagogue could have been the target of the attack.
But Oskar Deutsch, president of the Jewish Community Vienna, said the synagogue on Seitenstettengasse and the office building at the same address were already closed at the time of the attack, and it was “unclear” if it was one of the targets of the attack.
Deutsch told the Kurier newspaper that no members of Vienna’s Jewish community were among those injured in the attack.
Rabbi Schlomo Hofmeister told The Associated Press that he saw at least one person fire shots at people sitting outside bars in the street below his window.
“They were shooting at least 100 rounds just outside our building,” Hofmeister said.
French President Emmanuel Macron tweeted that the French “share the shock and grief of the Austrian people hit by an attack tonight.”
“After France, this is a friendly country that has been attacked. This is our Europe … We will not give in,” he wrote.
France has endured three attacks blamed on Muslim extremists in recent weeks: one by a Pakistani refugee that injured two people outside satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo’s old headquarters, the slaying of a schoolteacher who showed students caricatures of the prophet of Islam, and a deadly knife attack last Thursday in a church in the Mediterranean city of Nice. France’s anti-terrorism prosecutor has opened investigations into all three, and France is now at its highest level of alert.
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