Terror attack in Vienna leaves four dead

 Our live coverage has ended for now. Read our full report on the Vienna attack here.

ISIS claimed it was behind the attack in central Vienna on Monday that killed at least four people and wounded 22 others.

On Tuesday, the terror group released a statement along with a picture that, according to the group, showed the attacker. The group claimed the attacker used two guns, including one machine gun, and a knife. 

The group identified the man as Abu Dujana Al-Albany in their statement, which was posted to Telegram.

The aftermath of the attack is seen at a bar in Vienna on Tuesday.

What happened:

The victims:

The gunman:

Other suspects:

Condolences from around the world:

British Home Secretary Priti Patel has announced the UK’s terror threat level has been raised from “substantial” to “severe” on Tuesday.

“The public should continue to remain vigilant and report any suspicious activity to the police,” Patel said on Twitter.

A UK government official told CNN the decision to raise the alert level was “precautionary” and related to the attack in Vienna and the earlier attacks in France. “There are always lots of threats but this is precautionary,” the official added.

Rabbi Schlomo Hofmeister speaks to the media near the scene of the attack in Vienna, on Tuesday, November 3.

Rabbi Schlomo Hofmeister watched in horror as a gunman weaved in and out of bars and pubs in central Vienna, shooting at people enjoying a last night of fun before Austria’s nationwide coronavirus curfew came into effect.

“He was working like a professional, trained attacker,” Hofmeister told CNN. “He looked professional, he didn’t look confused and he wasn’t shooting around randomly – it was very targeted and coordinated, like a fighter.”

Hofmeister witnessed the attack Monday evening at the busy Bermuda Triangle entertainment quarter, watching from his home near the Seitenstettengasse Temple, the synagogue where he gives religious instruction.

Hofmeister called the police and told them that a gunman was running towards people at a bar, shooting “dozens, maybe hundreds, of rounds.”

Read the whole story here.

Heavily armed police stand outside the Vienna State Opera after shots were fired in the city center on Monday night.

When the security of the world-famous Vienna State Opera told its staff that shots had been fired in the city center and that people were not allowed to leave the building, the performance of Pagliacci’s Cavalleria Rusticana kept going.

“We decided not to stop the performance … it was our last performance before the corona-lockdown,” a spokeswoman for the opera house told CNN via email. 

The director went on stage and told the audience what had happened and that security forces would not allow people to leave the opera. 

“The audience was very calm, nobody panicked,” the spokeswoman said, adding that “after about an hour, a few musicians played the string quartet to entertain the audience that was still in the hall.” 

“The quartet was not arranged. They played it very spontaneously, there were not many people in the hall. They played a quartet by Joseph Haydn, one of the greatest composers of our country.”

Barbara Lovett was among those who witnessed the moment and posted a video on Twitter. “Police kept us safe inside the Vienna State Opera after tonight’s performance. While we waited, members of the Vienna Philharmonic started to play. No attack will ever stop the music in Vienna,” she tweeted.

French President Emmanuel Macron, left, speaks with Wolfgang Wagner, Deputy Head of Mission at the Austrian embassy, before signing a condolence book for victims of the Vienna attack, in Paris, on Tuesday.

Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz told CNN he has been in contact with the French President Emmanuel Macron on Tuesday to discuss whether there could be links between the attack in Vienna on Monday and the recent terror attacks in France.

“The ideology behind it is always the same,” Kurz told CNN. “It’s the idea of radicalizing youth, of radicalizing the second generation of people who live in our societies to fight our societies,” Kurz said.

France has seen two separate attacks in the past two weeks. A teacher, Samuel Paty, was murdered on October 16 in the northern Paris suburb of Éragny after showing cartoons published in the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo depicting the Prophet Mohammed to students in his class. Last week, three people were stabbed to death at a church in the French city of Nice.

Kurz said the European Union must be united in the fight against terrorism. “Because even if there are no links between this terrorist attack and the terrorist attacks in Germany and France, we know that the goal behind is always the same. These are people who are against our democracy, who are against our way of living and who are against our values,” he said.

Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz places a candle as he pays his respects to the victims of the shooting in Vienna, on November 3.

Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz told CNN the situation in Vienna was “more or less under control” after the attacker was shot dead by police.

In an interview in Vienna with CNN’s Fred Pleitgen on Tuesday afternoon, Kurz said the gunman likely acted alone.

“We know there was at least one gunman, probably he was alone, but he was able to kill four people and he wounded 14 people … we are very happy that the police was able to take him down, and so I would say is the situation is more or less under control,” he said.

Kurz added that the authorities are now trying to establish whether there are people who supported the attacker. “We are trying to find out if the attacker was part of a broader network.”

He added that the authorities know the gunman was “a supporter of the Islamic State.”

“It is crystal clear this terrorist attack was Islamist terrorist attack. The gunman was born in Austria, he has a migration background from northern Macedonia and what we know is that he is a supporter of the Islamic state,” he said.

Watch:

Flowers and candles are left for the victims of the attack at Schwedenplatz in Vienna, on Tuesday.

A German woman was identified as one of the people killed in the attack in Vienna on Monday, Germany’s Foreign Minister Heiko Mass said on his Twitter.

Four people were killed in the attack – two men and two women. The victims have not been named.

Earlier on Tuesday, Austrian Interior Minister Karl Nehammer identified them as “an elderly man, an elderly woman, a young passerby and a waitress.”

Italian Foreign Minister Luigi Di Maio holds a press conference on September 21 in Rome.

The Italian Foreign Minister Luigi Di Maio has proposed an EU-wide US-style Patriot Act after the Vienna and Nice attacks, he said Tuesday on his official Facebook account.

According to Di Maio it is time to take “measures that can prevent tragedies such as those in Nice and Vienna.”

He said:

Di Maio added that both Italy and the EU “must raise their security levels.”

Austrian investigators will want to establish what motivated Fejzulai Kujtim to launch his attack.

Monday’s assault came amid renewed controversy in Europe over cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed. In 2015, terrorists attacked the offices of the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo (which had published the cartoons), killing 12 people. 

A French history teacher was murdered last month by a young Chechen in Paris after showing images of the cartoons to a class. France’s President Emmanuel Macron launched an unsparing defense of French secularism and said “the problem is Islamist separatism.”

Whether Kujtim was angered by the cartoons is at this stage unclear. He had clearly been radicalized several years ago, according to authorities. And the history of that radicalization will now be a focus of investigation.

Like many European countries, Austria experienced a surge in young radicalized Muslims trying to join ISIS in Syria between 2014 and 2017, before the terrorists’ self-declared Caliphate collapsed. Kujtim is reported to have reached as far as Turkey in his effort to join ISIS. 

According to Austria’s intelligence service, the BVT, more than 300 Austrian citizens actively participated or attempted to take part in fighting alongside extremists in Iraq and Syria. 59 were detained before they could leave Austria. 

Perhaps more strikingly, one-fifth of those who were jailed for trying to join ISIS were 21 or younger, predominantly second-generation immigrants from Chechnya, Turkey, and the Balkans. 

Police in Vienna guard near Schwedenplatz on November 3.

Austrian authorities have reviewed roughly half of the 20,000 witness videos that have been submitted to the police by the public and have, so far, found no evidence of there being more than one attacker involved in the shooting. However, they stressed that the investigation continues.

The police originally said there might have been more than one people involved in the attack on Monday. A police spokesperson told CNN this was based on witness testimonies and emergency calls.

Speaking to reporters on Tuesday, Austria’s Interior Minister Karl Nehammer said the police officer who was injured in the attack on Monday has undergone a successful surgery and was in stable condition in a hospital.

“It is important to say, in this horrible situation, that the police officer was brought to safety by two Austrian citizens with migrant background,” Nehammer said.

Austrian authorities have identified the perpetrator in Monday night’s attack as an Austrian-born 20-year-old named Fejzulai Kujtim, according to state news agency APA. 

Kujtim was from the Vienna suburb of Moedling.

Austria’s Interior Minister Karl Nehammer said at a Tuesday news conference that the attacker had served time in prison after being convicted of trying to travel to Syria to fight for ISIS as a teenager.

He was sentenced in April 2019 to 22 months in jail, but freed eight months later on December 5, as he was considered a young adult and therefore eligible for conditional release. 

Speaking at the news conference, Nehammer said there will be further questions about the deradicalization program the attacker went through.

Correction: A previous version of this post incorrectly stated what part of Austria Fejzulai Kujtim was from. He was from Moedling, a suburb of Vienna.

Police officers stay in position during an operation in Vienna on November 3.

Vienna Police President Gerhard Puerstl said 18 homes have been searched in connection with the attack in the Austrian capital on Monday night, and that 14 people have been taken into custody.

In a joint news conference with Puerstl on Tuesday, Austrian Interior Minister Karl Nehammer said the attacker was heavily armed – he was carrying a Kalashnikov assault weapon, another gun and a machete. Nehammer said there was no doubt that the attacker was an ISIS supporter.

Austrian Interior Minister Karl Nehammer is giving an update to the media on last night’s attack in Vienna.

He started by saying that the number of victim is higher than previously thought: four people have been killed and 22 are injured.

Nehammer also gave more information on the attacker, who was shot and killed by the police. The minister said the shooter was neutralized within nine minutes of the attack.

He was a 20-year-old dual citizen of Austria and North Macedonia. Nehammer said the attacker had a previous criminal record and had “attempted affiliation” with the Islamic State.

Pope Francis leads a general weekly audience in Vatican City on September 23.

Pope Francis has joined the foreign dignitaries renouncing the attack in Vienna. The head of the Catholic Church said he was praying for the victims and their families.

“Enough violence! Let us together strengthen peace and fraternity. Only love can silence hate,” he said in a tweet.

The deadly attack in Vienna on Monday unfolded in six locations across central Vienna, according to an Austrian law enforcement source speaking to journalists on Tuesday.

Werner Beninger was having a dinner with his wife at a restaurant in central Vienna when the attack unfolded nearby last night.

“All of a sudden shots rang out from one direction and I thought at first that they were fireworks,” he told CNN.

Beninger said he heard “many” shots. “It must have been continuous fire,” he added.

He said people fled into the garden of the restaurant, when special police unit – known as WEGA – arrived and told everyone to hide in the basement.

“There were roughly 50 people and we waited it out in the basement. We stayed there until 1:00 or 1:30 in the morning,” Beninger said.

New coronavirus restrictions went into effect in Austria overnight, just hours after the deadly attack in Vienna.

A curfew is now in place between 8 p.m. and 6 a.m. Restaurants and cafes are only allowed to operate take-out and delivery services. Gyms are closed and cultural events are cancelled. Shops can remain open, but have to limit the number of people inside to make social distancing possible.