Norway Bow and Arrow Attack Leaves 5 Dead

OSLO — A gentleman armed with a bow and arrow went on a rampage in a Norwegian city outside Oslo on Wednesday, killing five persons and wounding two others, the authorities claimed.

The assault took position in Kongsberg, a city of 26,000 people today about 50 miles southwest of Oslo. A suspect was claimed to be in custody.

“The details we now have, this man or woman carried out these actions alone,” the law enforcement chief, Oyvind Aas, instructed reporters.

The attack started soon right after 6 p.m., when the assailant commenced producing his way via the center of the town. Citizens were being urged to look for shelter within. A 50 percent-hour afterwards, a suspect was in custody, the law enforcement claimed.

Across the place, the Norwegian law enforcement, who ordinarily are not armed, were presented authorization to have weapons “due to the serious incident in Kongsberg,” the authorities claimed in a assertion late Wednesday. They explained it as a precaution.

“The police currently have no concrete indications that there is a adjust in the risk level in the nation,” the statement claimed.

But the attack remaining the place on edge. Hospitals were being put on notify. So was the Justice Ministry.

“The incident has left us all shaken,” mentioned Prime Minister Erna Solberg. “The news is terrifying. I understand that people today are finding afraid.”

The authorities did not promptly launch data about the suspect.

“It is normal to consider if it is a terror function,” Main Aas reported at a information meeting, incorporating that it was “too before long to say for sure what the man’s inspiration is.”

Prime Minister Solberg manufactured a identical point.

“I emphasize that we do not know if it is terror or not,” she claimed.

The assailant ranged about a wide swath of the metropolis, leaving investigators with an extensive crime scene to scour. No police officers were injured in the attack, the authorities said.

Murder is exceptional in Norway. In a place with a inhabitants of a bit additional than five million, there were 31 murders in 2020, most involving people who understood a single an additional.

But the assault Wednesday came just months following Norwegians marked a somber anniversary: A single 10 years in the past, the place endured its deadliest attack because World War II. In July 2011, a proper-wing extremist detonated a bomb in Oslo and then went on a capturing rampage at a political summer season camp for younger individuals on the small island of Utoya. Dozens were being killed.

In the several years since the massacre, Norway has struggled to reckon with the trauma and been compelled to grapple with agonizing inquiries of what could induce an person to veer so far from the democratic ideas that, together with income from fossil gasoline, have specified Norwegians just one of the world’s maximum standards of residing.

While that was the worst these killing in the largely peaceful place, a small over two many years back, a youthful man was billed with tried murder just after he entered a mosque in close proximity to Oslo armed and carrying physique armor and a helmet. He was overpowered by a worshiper.

As investigators worked their way through the tiny town of Kongsberg on Wednesday, residents expressed horror and disbelief that their country, and this time their hometown, could be the focus on of this kind of violence.

“This is a tragedy, totally horrible,” reported Mayor Kari Anne Sand. “This is the form of point you feel can not happen in Kongsberg. Now we just have to cope with it in the greatest fashion doable.”

Melissa Eddy contributed reporting.