A Repulsive Terrorist Attack

"During the last 24 hours, we arrested 14 people,. Now we will find out in the next days if he is part of a broader network or not."

"What we know is that he is a supporter of the Islamic State."

"We all know in our country this is not a fight between Christians or Muslims or Austrians and people from other countries."

Austrian chancellor Sebastian Kurz

 

"We have brought several special forces units together that are now searching for the presumed terrorists."

"I am therefore not limiting it to an area of Vienna because these are mobile perpetrators."

"[Several] heavily armed and dangerous [attackers are still on the loose with large parts of central Vienna shut down and sealed off in a manhunt]."

Austrian Interior Minister Karl Nehammer

Police cars and ambulances in central Vienna on Monday night.

"We are living in the compound of the synagogue. Upon hearing shots we looked down [from] the windows and saw the gunmen shooting at the guests of the various bars and pubs."

"The gunmen were running around and shooting at least 100 rounds or even more in front of our building."

Rabbi Schlomo Hofmeister, Stadttempel synagogue

 

"I was cleaning up and suddenly I heard shots. A lot of them, from a machine gun. I looked outside, someone ran past and probably shot someone in front of the synagogue."

"He was wearing a white jogging suit or something similar and he kept shooting."

Owner of a restaurant on the Seitenstettengasse, close to the synagogue

Screengrabs of footage appearing on various social media sites showing terrorist attack in Vienna, Nov. 2, 2020. Photo by Screengrab

The attack began at around 8:00 p.m. local time in a central area of Vienna, the Austrian capital. The country  prepared to go back into lockdown, and this night before lockdown, people were out in droves at local bars, hotels and restaurants on the street, in close proximity to the city's central synagogue. It was immediately assumed that the synagogue was the initial target. It might have been, no one can now interrogate the sole attacker, he is dead, one of five who died last night, the four others victims of Fejzulai Kujtim, a 20-year-old Austrian man from the town of St. Poelten, 33 miles west of Vienna. 

 

Immediately the attack began, bedlam prevailed. Six discrete sites were declared to be under attack, each by different gunmen, professionally organized and equipped with high-powered rifles, shooting at random, shouting out 'Allahu Akbar!' as they consigned total strangers to death in their mission to shock and terrorize, and likely avenge the Prophet Mohammad whose image had been mocked in neighbouring France, where two deadly knife attacks had just taken place in the past several weeks stemming from a French teacher using Mohammad cartoons illustratively in a middle-school class on civics and freedom of speech.

 

As the evening wore on it was assumed that the attacker, by then shot dead by police, had an accomplice, perhaps more than one, and whoever they were, they were escaping, armed and dangerous.  Police urged the population to remain indoors, sheltered, that danger stalked anyone unaware and vulnerable out in the open. Borders were closed, a massive search was launched for the co-perpetrator or perpetrators, the henchmen who had been involved in the murder spree alongside Fejzulai Kujtim.

 

Until, finally, it was determined that in all likelihood he had acted alone in a powerful frenzy of religiou-inspired fervour. There was no one else. He also happened to be a convicted felon, imprisoned on a charge of terrorism, he had attempted to leave Austria for Syria to join the Islamic State. While in prison he had undergone deradicalization training and was deemed by authorities to have passed with flying colours, earning him an early release from detention. Presumably, Austrian security is too man-short keeping tabs on its identified extremists to fully cover them all and obviously Eajzulai Kujtim, as a public threat, was overlooked.

 

He had succeeded in wounding another 15 people, among them a police officer, with seven of the total wounded remaining hospitalized in critical condition.Not that the manhunt for possible Islamist collaborators is over; thus far 14 people have been investigated as possible conspirators with the attacker, and are in custody while their suspected links to the atrocity are being probed. The witnesses too were convinced that a number of attackers were involved, steering their excited narratives.

 

Armed police stay in position at the scene of the attack in the Austrian capital.

 

 

Last night the Vienna police tweeted an alert to the general public: "There are several injured persons. We are on site with all available forces. Please avoid all public squares in the city". The army, assured Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz, would see to the protection of vulnerable capital sites leaving the police to focus on anti-terror operations. Today is another day. There have been other revelations, chief among them that this was a sole-actor terrorist event. There was but one active shooter. A man with Macedonian-Austrian citizenship, although he was born in Austria.

An empathetic and terrorism-seasoned French President Emmanuel Macron gave his full and unstinting support to Austria; it is debatable whether the compliment had been initiated in reverse weeks earlier. "This is our Europe. Our enemies must know with whom they are dealing. We will not retreat", stated President Macron, of the destructive malevolence of the extremist Islamists harbouring in safety in progressive-minded Europe.

In Austria, as in the United States, private gun ownership is fairly high, though not in competition with U.S. numbers. Although Austria has of late not been the recipient of large-scale terrorist attacks such as Paris, Berlin and London have been vulnerable to in recent years, in August a 32-year-old Syrian refugee was arrested, suspected of trying to attack a Jewish community leader in Graz, one of Austria's larger cities. 

 

Armed police stand outside the Vienna State Opera amid a terrorist attack in the Austrian capital. Photograph: Michael Gruber/Getty Images