Vienna reels from a rare terrorist attack

He was armed with an automatic rifle, a pistol, a machete and a dummy suicide belt. For nine minutes, the 20-year-old gunman turned the cobbled streets of central Vienna into a war zone, firing so many shots from so many places that officials initially believed there were multiple attackers.

By the time the police shot him Monday night, he had killed four people and wounded 23, shocking a country where deadly terrorist attacks are rare.

Also read: Vienna gunman: IS supporter who 'fooled' the system

But the shooter, a 20-year-old dual citizen of Austria and North Macedonia, was well known to the authorities. Two years ago, he was sentenced to prison for attempting to travel to Syria to join the Islamic State group, raising questions about whether someone so firmly on the radar of Austria’s intelligence and law enforcement agencies should have been more closely watched.

In addition, Slovakian authorities alerted Austria in July that he had travelled to Slovakia to try to buy ammunition for his AK-47, a senior Austrian official confirmed Tuesday.

Few details have been released about how the shooting unfolded or who the victims were, but officials have identified six locations in one neighbourhood where they say shots were fired.

Also read: Islamic State claims responsibility for Vienna attack

The dead, who have yet to be publicly identified, include three Austrians and one German, and range in age from 19 to 34, the senior official said. Little is known about them other than one was a young man who was shot on the street, another a waitress in a bar. Among the wounded was a 28-year-old police officer.

Monday’s violence comes after recent terrorist attacks in France — including the beheading of a teacher near Paris and a knife attack at a church in Nice — that have both been linked to Islamist extremists.

Also read: Six in custody over Nice church attack in France

Chancellor Sebastian Kurz of Austria said in an address to the nation Tuesday that the shooting was “definitely an Islamist terrorist attack,” which he called “an attack out of hatred, hatred for our basic values.”

But Kurz, his interior minister and the mayor of Vienna all vowed that the attacker would not divide Austrian society or alter Austrians’ way of life. The chancellor warned against making assumptions about Austria’s Muslim community.