A man armed with arrows killed four women and one man, and injured two people on Wednesday in a shopping center in Norway. Among the injured was an off-duty police officer.
The police chief in Kongsberg, a town of approximately 28,000 not far from the capital of Norway, said there was “a confrontation” between officers and the assailant, and the suspect had been arrested.
“The man who carried out the act has been arrested by the police, and there is no active search for more people,” said police Chief Oeyving Aas. “Based on the information we have, there is one person behind this.”
Police arrested a 37-year-old Danish citizen who they say they had been in contact with over the last year. Police said the suspect had converted to Islam, and they feared he had been radicalized. He remains unidentified.
The suspect walked around the downtown shopping area shooting people with arrows. The police chief declined to comment on reports that the man used a crossbow. One newspaper showed an image of an arrow stuck in a wood-sided building.
Norwegian police are normally unarmed, but officers have access to guns and rifles when necessary. Police nationwide had been ordered to carry firearms as an extra precaution.
The attack comes a decade after a terrorist set off a bomb in Oslo and followed with an attack at a summer camp of the left-wing Labour Party’s youth organization. The mass shooting killed 77 people on July 22, 2011.