Everything we know so far about the Vienna terror attack

Austrian officials say gun rampage that left five people dead was inspired by Islamic State

Armed police on the streets of Vienna
Armed police outside Vienna State Opera after gunmen opened fire in the Austrian capital
(Image credit: Michael Gruber)

Austrian police are hunting for at least one “heavily armed and dangerous” gunman following an attack in Vienna that left five people dead and more than a dozen injured, the authorities have confirmed.

Interior Minister Karl Nehammer said one of the attackers, who was shot dead by police, was an Islamic State sympathiser. The suspect “was armed with an assault rifle and wearing a fake suicide vest”, Sky News reports.

It remains unclear how many other attackers got away.

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The shooting rampage began at 8pm local time, a few hours before new Covid-19 restrictions came into force. “Many people were out enjoying bars and restaurants which are now closed until the end of November,” says the BBC.

The first shots were fired “outside the main synagogue”, the first of “six locations in central Vienna” to be targeted, Reuters reports.

This morning, police officers are reviewing 20,000 videos of the attack that have been shared with the authorities by members of the public.

People have been asked not to post footage online, but “videos on social media showed at least four gunmen firing what looked like assault rifles indiscriminately as they advanced through the square”, The Times reports.

“One clip showed a gunman in a black hat and a white jacket shooting a bystander outside a shop and then returning to shoot the victim with a pistol.”

A spokesperson for Vienna’s health service “confirmed that they were dealing primarily with gunshot wounds, but also with stab wounds”, says The Guardian.

Two men and two women died in the attack, along with the gunman killed by police. A further seven people have life-threatening injuries, the Austria Press Agency reports, and ten more are in hospital with “moderate to minor injuries”.

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Holden Frith is The Week’s digital director. He also makes regular appearances on “The Week Unwrapped”, speaking about subjects as diverse as vaccine development and bionic bomb-sniffing locusts. He joined The Week in 2013, spending five years editing the magazine’s website. Before that, he was deputy digital editor at The Sunday Times. He has also been TheTimes.co.uk’s technology editor and the launch editor of Wired magazine’s UK website. Holden has worked in journalism for nearly two decades, having started his professional career while completing an English literature degree at Cambridge University. He followed that with a master’s degree in journalism from Northwestern University in Chicago. A keen photographer, he also writes travel features whenever he gets the chance.