COPENHAGEN – A man reportedly armed with a knife threatened passers-by on the streets of the Norwegian capital, Oslo, on Tuesday, before being shot dead by police, officials said.
Norwegian media published footage of the alleged attacker, naked from the waist up and wielding a knife. Police initially suggested that passers-by had been wounded, but later said that only one police officer was slightly hurt.
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“We have so far no information that this is terror-related," Senior Police Chief Egil Joergen Brekke told a news conference.
“To us, this appears to be a stand-alone act, so that there is no reason to fear for the safety of the city for others. This is a person who is known to us in the past and who has a history,” Brekke told reporters.
The first reports to the police shortly before 9 a.m. were about a man with a knife running after another person, Brekke said. A nearby patrol car in the Bislett neighborhood of northern Oslo rushed to the scene and first tried to stop the man by running him down before it drove into a building between a flower shop and a cafe to halt the man's progress.
The man managed to open the car door, police spokesman Torgeir Brenden said.
He said “several shots” were fired at the man but did not specify whether it was the police officers in the car who opened fire. Brenden said the perpetrator was rushed to a nearby hospital where he died.
Norwegian media said up to six shots were heard, citing witnesses. Brekke could not give detailed information, saying the Norwegian Bureau for the Investigation of Police Affairs is probing the events — which is customary in Norway when police officers use firearms.
“To my knowledge, there are no other injured,” Brekke, the police chief, said.
Last month a man armed with a bow and arrow and a knife killed five people in a small town southwest of Oslo.
Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Stoere said that he understood “very well” why locals experienced Tuesday's events as dramatic.
“But if you compare with other large cities in Europe, Oslo is a safe city,” he told Norwegian news agency NTB.