Man with bow and arrows kills five in Norway
“It is natural to consider whether this is a terrorist event,” Chief Aas told a press conference, adding that it was “too early to say for sure what the motivation is. of man “.
The assailant has spread across a wide swath of town, leaving investigators with a vast crime scene to scour. A witness, Kjetil Stormark, editor of a national security news site, said police secured a supermarket where part of the attack allegedly took place and a section of a street.
Authorities said they were investigating whether another weapon, a knife, may also have been used in the attacks. A policeman who was not on duty and was not in uniform was among those injured in the attack, authorities said.
Murder is rare in Norway. In a country of just over five million people, there were 31 murders in 2020, most involving people who knew each other.
But Wednesday’s attack came just months after the Norwegians marked a grim anniversary: A decade ago, the country suffered its deadliest attack since World War II. In July 2011, a right-wing extremist detonated a bomb in Oslo and then engaged in a shootout at a political youth summer camp on the small island of Utoya. In total, 77 were killed.
In the years since the massacre, Norway struggled to cope with the trauma and was forced to grapple with painful questions about what might cause an individual to stray so far from democratic principles which, along with the income from fossil fuels, have given Norwegians one of the highest standards of living in the world.
While it was the worst recent episode in the largely peaceful country, just over two years ago a young man entered a mosque near Oslo armed and wearing a bulletproof vest and helmet. before being mastered by a devotee. The man first killed his sister, police said, and he was convicted of the murder.