OSLO, Norway — Two folks had been killed and a minimum of 19 injured early Saturday morning in downtown Oslo when a gunman opened hearth outdoors two nightclubs and a diner, the police and Norway’s state broadcaster mentioned.
A male suspect was apprehended 5 minutes after the capturing was reported, the Oslo police mentioned on Twitter. Tore Barstad, a police operations chief who spoke to reporters concerning the incident, didn’t determine the suspect or speculate a couple of motive. He mentioned three of the wounded had been severely injured.
Mr. Barstad mentioned about 40 folks had witnessed the capturing and that there appeared to have been just one gunman. He declined to say what sort of weapon had been used.
Olav Ronneberg, a criminal offense reporter for the Norwegian public broadcaster, NRK, occurred to be within the space when the violence started. “I noticed a person arrive on the scene with a bag, he took up a gun and began capturing,” he advised the outlet.
One of many two nightclubs close to the positioning of the assault, the London Pub, is a middle of homosexual nightlife in Oslo. The town’s annual Satisfaction parade, a spotlight of a 10-day pageant that started final week, is scheduled for Saturday.
The timing and the situation of the assault raised concern that it might have been supposed to focus on the L.G.B.T.Q. neighborhood in Norway, the place homosexual {couples} have had the proper to marry and have kids since 2009.
The London Pub, which lies a couple of blocks from Norway’s Parliament constructing, opened within the Nineteen Seventies. An image of the bar in a list on Oslo’s official tourism web site exhibits a rainbow flag hoisted above its entrance.
Norway’s prime minister, Jonas Gahr Retailer, described the capturing in a Fb submit as a “merciless and deeply surprising assault on harmless folks.”
Gun house owners should be licensed and take security courses, and a ban on semiautomatic weapons enacted by the Norwegian Parliament — a belated response to a 2011 assault by a far-right gunman that killed 77 folks — took impact final 12 months.
The 2011 assault began when the gunman, Anders Behring Breivik, detonated a fertilizer bomb in downtown Oslo, killing eight folks. He then killed 69 folks, largely youngsters, in a capturing rampage at a political summer season camp.
Mr. Breivik obtained a 21-year sentence for the assaults, the utmost below Norwegian regulation. He was denied parole in February by a Norwegian courtroom that mentioned he “appeared devoid of empathy and compassion for the victims of the fear.”
Henrik Pryser Libell reported from Oslo and Mike Ives from Seoul.
