Several people have been killed and injured after a man with a bow and arrow began shooting at people in Kongsberg, Norway on Wednesday. Kongsberg is located about 53 miles from Norway’s capital city of Oslo.
“There are several injured and also dead,” Kongsberg police chief Øyvind Aas said at a press conference on Wednesday night, the Associated Press reported. Police were alerted to the attack around 6:30 p.m. local timeand arrested the suspect about 20 minutes later.
The BBC reported the attacker began shooting arrows at a Coop Extra supermarket on Kongsberg’s west side. Residents were then ordered to stay indoors.
According to police, the suspect walked around the city of Kongsberg, shooting at people with the bow and arrows. A suspect was eventually arrested and taken to a police station in the town of Drammen.
An investigation into the attack and the underlying motive is underway.
It is not immediately clear how many people were killed or injured in the bow and arrow attack. The injured have since been taken to nearby hospitals for treatment.
Aas said there are “several crime scenes.”
The police chief said the suspect appears to have acted alone.
“The man who carried out the act has been arrested by the police, and there is no active search for more people,” Aas said. “Based on the information we have, there is one person behind this.”
The Norwegian Ministry of Justice announced, “Minister of Justice and Emergency Management Monica Mæland has been informed of the situation at Kongsberg and is following it closely.”
In response to the bow and arrow attack, the Norwegian police directorate took the rare move of ordering police officers to carry firearms, CNN reported.
“Due to the serious incident in Kongsberg where several people were killed and injured tonight, the police in Norway are temporarily armed,” the Norwegian Police directorate said.
“This is an additional emergency measure,” the police statement added. “The police currently have no concrete indications that there is a change in the threat level in the country.”
The attack comes a decade after Anders Behring Breivik set off a bomb in Oslo’s government district and then carried out a mass shooting at the summer camp of a youth organization for Norway’s left-wing Labor Party, killing 77 people on July 22, 2011. Breivik was sentenced to 21 years in prison, the maximum under Norwegian law, though his term may be extended indefinitely if he’s still considered a danger to society. Since his conviction and the start of his prison sentence, Breivik has self-identified as a fascist and advocated for the formation of a neo-Nazi party in Norway.
