Norway: 37-year-old Dane killed five people with a bow and arrow

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Police operation in Kongsberg

Photo: HAKON MOSVOLD LARSEN / AFP

Norway is in shock.

Many details of the brutal attack on Wednesday evening in the south of the country are still unclear.

At least the police were able to reveal details of the identity of the suspect during the night.

The police said early Thursday morning that he is a 37-year-old Dane who lives in the small town of Kongsberg in southern Norway.

He was charged.

The man was arrested on Wednesday evening.

Previously, a man armed with a bow and arrow had attacked several people from around 6.15 p.m., killed five people and injured two others.

The investigators assume that he acted alone.

The further background of the act remained unclear for the time being.

A terrorist motive could not initially be ruled out either.

Kongsberg is located around 80 kilometers southwest of the capital Oslo.

The injured have been rushed to the hospital and are in the intensive care unit.

The local police chief had said in the evening that there was no danger to life.

One of the two injured people was a police officer who was not on duty.

Several parts of the city were cordoned off

The attacks occurred in several places in the city, according to the police.

The perpetrator moved over a larger area.

The incident occurred on the eve of the new Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre's inauguration.

It is also unclear whether there is a connection here.

Several parts of the city were cordoned off and the police were temporarily armed because of the incident.

It is a readiness measure - there are currently no indications of a change in the threat situation in the country.

The Norwegian secret service PST was also informed of the incident.

Prime Minister is "shaken"

Norway's outgoing Prime Minister Erna Solberg was "shocked" by the fact.

“Our thoughts go first of all to those affected and their relatives,” said Solberg late on Wednesday evening at a press conference called at short notice in Oslo: “The perpetrator committed terrible acts against several people.

This is a very dramatic situation that hits the community in Kongsberg hard. "

The incident brings back bad memories: a good ten years ago Norway experienced the worst terrorist attack in its modern history.

On July 22, 2011, right-wing terrorist Anders Behring Breivik detonated a bomb hidden in a transporter in Oslo's government district, killing eight people.

Then he drove to the island of Utøya, about 30 kilometers away, where he pretended to be a police officer and opened fire on the participants in the annual summer camp of the youth organization of the Social Democratic Labor Party.

69 people, mostly teenagers and young adults, were killed on Utøya.

Breivik named right-wing extremist and Islamophobic motives for his actions.

He was sentenced in August 2012 to the then maximum sentence of 21 years with a minimum imprisonment of ten years.

jok / dpa