Two people were killed and at least five injured in separate shootings yesterday at a Copenhagen cafe and synagogue yesterday. Police later shot and killed the suspect in both attacks. The Wall Street Journal reported:
The first targeted a seminar on Islam and free speech in the wake of the January attack on French satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo. Police said a man sprayed dozens of gunshots through the plate glass windows of central Copenhagen’s Krudttoenden cafe, where Swedish cartoonist Lars Vilks and France’s ambassador to Denmark, François Zimeray, were in attendance. Neither Mr. Vilks nor Mr. Zimeray was injured, but a 55-year-old man died and three security officers were wounded.
Hours later, police reported another shooting, near a synagogue in downtown Copenhagen, that killed a 37-year-old guard outside a bat mitzvah and wounded two police officers.
Police later said they believed the same gunman was behind both attacks. The Danish Security and Intelligence Service said the suspect, a Copenhagen resident, was known to police before the attack but that there was no information to suggest he traveled to war zones in Iraq or Syria. Police declined to release his identity, citing the ongoing investigation.
The Journal also quoted a witness, Agnieszka Kolek, who said of the assailant, “we heard him shout ‘Allahu akbar.’ ”
The Telegaph provided a timeline of the shootings, the reactions and an audio recording (embedded below) of the attack on the cafe. The Telegraph also identified the two men killed as Finn Noergaard, a documentary filmmaker who was killed at the free speech event at the cafe, and Dan Uzan, 37, a member of a Jewish security patrol, who was killed outside the synagogue.
The first shooting occurred at an event attended by Lars Vilks, a cartoonist who had received death threats for his cartoons of Mohammed.
The New York Times reported:
The latest violence comes as Europe is increasingly on edge over the January assaults on a French satirical newspaper and a kosher supermarket in Paris, the worst spasm of terrorism in France in decades. …
Fears are also rising about European Muslims who have become radicalized. Denmark, like many European countries, has seen young Danes going to Iraq and Syria to fight with jihadists. At least 100 Danes have done so.
[Photo: CCTV News / YouTube ]