5 killed, 2 injured attack in Norway, suspect named in terrorist attack

KONGSBERG, Norway — A man killed five people and injured two others Wednesday in the Norwegian town of Kongsberg, authorities said.

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“The man has been apprehended … from the information we now have, this person carried out these actions alone,” police Chief Oeyvind Aas told reporters after the incident, according to The Guardian. “Several people have been injured and several are dead.”

Update 12:10 p.m. EST Oct. 18: Police have released more information on the attack, saying that despite earlier press briefings that said the man, identified as Espen Andersen Brathen, used a bow and arrow in the attack. Monday, police said he used “stabbing weapons” instead, but did not say if he used a knife or something else, Reuters reported.

He said that the man had discarded the bow and arrows during the attack, Reuters reported.

Update 3:37 p.m. EST Oct. 14: Police have identified the man as 37-year-old Espen Andersen Brathen, The New York Times reported.

Police have said Brathen, a Danish citizen, had converted to Islam but hadn’t said when his conversion happened, the Times reported.

“We have previously been in contact with him regarding worries about radicalization,” regional police chief Ole Bredrup Saeverd said at a news conference before Brathen was named.

Police said they are still trying to pin down a motive for the attack at the same time as flags were lowered to half-staff and residents created a makeshift memorial in the town square, the Times reported.

Update 7:31 a.m. EST Oct. 14: Police said the man who they said shot several people was a Muslim convert who had been flagged in the past for being radicalized, police said, according to The Associated Press.

The deadly attack is now being considered an act of terrorism, the AP reported. The determination was made by the country’s domestic security agency, known as PST.

“The investigation will clarify in more detail what the incidents were motivated by,” PST said in a statement.

“There earlier had been worries of the man having been radicalized, police Chief Ole B. Saeverud said during a news conference. He did not explain what is considered radicalized meant.

Four women and one man between the ages of 50 and 70 were killed, the AP reported.

Police believe all of the deaths happened after they arrived at the scene and were in contact with the man.

The man, who has not been identified, admitted to the killings, The Times reported.

“He talked calmly and clearly described what he had done. He admitted to killing the five people,” Ann Iren Svane Mathiassen, a police lawyer in charge of the investigation, said, according to The Times.

Update 12:59 a.m. EST Oct. 14: The suspect was identified as a 37-year-old man who is a Danish citizen but lives in Kongsberg, CNN reported. The man, who has not been named, was arrested Wednesday and taken to the nearby city of Drammen.

Police have not said what charges the man might be facing.

The death toll was the worst of any attack in Norway since 2011, Reuters reported. That is when Anders Behring Breivik, an extremist, killed 77 people, most of them teenagers, at a youth camp

Update 5:35 p.m. EST Oct. 13: Police said five people were killed in the bow-and-arrow attack near the Norwegian capital of Oslo, according to The Associated Press.

Police said that two other people were hospitalized and were in intensive care, including an off-duty officer who was inside the shop where the attack occurred.

Chief Oeyvind Aas, the police chief in the town of Kongsberg, said there was “a confrontation” between officers and the assailant, but he did not elaborate, according to the AP.

Original report: The Guardian reported that Aas declined to specify the number of victims. He added that authorities were working “several crime scenes.”

Police said the suspect walked around the city and shot at several people, according to The Associated Press. Citing a police spokesman, CNN reported that authorities first learned of the incident around 6:15 p.m.

The motive behind the attack was not immediately clear, according to BBC News. Police told CNN that it remained “too early to tell” Wednesday whether the situation would be treated as a terror attack.

Kongsberg is about 40 miles southwest of Oslo, Norway’s capital.

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