Several people died in a shooting at a shopping center in Copenhagen, Denmark this Sunday, local authorities reported. A man aged 22 was arrested, and I do not rule out an act of terrorism.
“There are several wounded, and what we also know now is that there are several dead”, said the chief inspector of police, Soren Thomassen, adding that the police had launched a massive search operation throughout the Zeeland region.
Copenhagen authorities said officers were dispatched to a shopping mall in the Danish capital on Sunday afternoon following the report of the shooting, alerting people inside the mall to stay put and wait for help.
Local media published images showing heavily armed police officers in the area as well as people running out of the mall. Images published by the tabloid Ristra Bladet showed a person being carried by rescuers to an ambulance on a stretcher, the New York Post reported.
“People first thought he was a thief. Then suddenly I heard shots and threw myself behind the counter inside the store,” a witness told TV2 station. “I was just shooting at the crowd, not at the ceiling or the floor.”
The multi-story mall has restaurants, shops, and parking. It is located about five kilometers south of central Copenhagen.
Currently the terrorist threat against Denmark is being assessed as “serious”, with the greatest threat coming from “militant Islamism”, according to the latest report from the Danish Security and Intelligence Service.
The tragic events of Sunday occur days after its neighbor Norway was surprised by a lone gunman who killed two people in the capital, Oslo.
The last time Denmark experienced a similar attack, it was in 2015, when two people died and 6 police officers were injured after a gunman shot and killed a person outside a cultural center, which was hosting a debate on freedom expression. The assailant then killed a person outside a Jewish synagogue in central Copenhagen. The shooter was killed by the police.
With information from the New York Post