At least one perpetrator was still on the run hours later, said Austria’s Interior Minister Karl Nehammer at a press conference on Tuesday night. “The attack is still ongoing.”
The attackers killed at least three people on Monday evening and several others were injured, including a police officer. A suspect had been shot, said the Vienna police.
“We cannot limit this in terms of numbers yet, we are still in the process of getting an overview,” said the spokesman for the Viennese professional rescue service, Daniel Melcher, of the Austrian news agency APA on Monday evening. According to the head of the Viennese hospitals, Dr. Michael Binder, there are “15 injured, seven seriously. All with gunshot wounds. ”The last hospital admission was therefore at 10:10 pm.
The attack had started around 8 p.m. in a busy neighborhood where many people were walking shortly before the new corona curfews began. The police then called on the population to avoid public places.
Interior Minister Karl Nehammer later extended the warning to the entire city center of Vienna at the press conference. Compulsory schooling will be suspended on Tuesday.
Austria’s Chancellor Sebastian Kurz has condemned the attack as a “disgusting terrorist attack”. “We will never allow ourselves to be intimidated by terrorism and will fight these attacks with all possible means,” said Kurz on Monday evening. The police will take decisive action against the perpetrators.
He spoke of a “terrorist attack with heavily armed, very professional perpetrators.” Whether “public life can start on Tuesday is not yet certain.” That depends on the next few hours.
