Polish prosecutors have launched a terrorism investigation after a 24-year-old gunman opened fire in a crowded market square in Kraków, killing six people, among them a British citizen, and leaving 17 others wounded.
In a statement posted on social media as two days of national mourning began on Sunday, the national prosecutor's office said it was investigating "the killing of six people … using a firearm, and the attempted murder of many others, including police officers, this act constituting a terrorist offence".
The attack, rare in a country long seen as safer than many of its western European neighbours, has heightened anxiety that was already running high after a series of school stabbings in October that left one woman dead and that officials said were connected to extremist material online.
Police said the suspect, a Polish national, sped into Kraków's main square in the heart of the old town, an area normally filled with tourists, at around 3pm on Saturday. Dressed in military-style fatigues and a bulletproof vest, he fired at random while making what the Kraków police spokesperson Katarzyna Cisło called a "wild ride" around the square. He was wounded in an exchange of fire with officers, arrested, and taken to hospital, where he underwent surgery and remains under heavy guard.
Interior minister Marcin Kierwiński said the suspect was fascinated with far-right ideologies and expressed "very radical" and "ultra-nationalistic" views. Police confirmed that three people found dead at the man's family home in Ostrowiec Świętokrzyski, a town about 100 miles north east of Kraków, were his father, 53, his mother, 52, and his sister, 21. They were believed to have died of gunshot wounds.
Of the six people killed, four were women and two were men. Three of the victims were Polish women, while two have not yet been identified. Five of the injured are foreign nationals, from Britain, Austria, Germany, Portugal and Russia, and two police officers were also hurt, one of them seriously.
Mourners placed candles in the square, which remained partially sealed off on Sunday, and flags were lowered to half mast across Poland. European flags outside the European Commission in Brussels were also lowered "in solidarity with the Polish people", the commission said. Defence minister Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz described the shooting as an "act of terror" against the people of Kraków, Poland's second largest city, which draws 15 million visitors a year, most of them passing through the main square. Authorities said the square, adjoining streets and sections along the perpetrator's escape route would stay closed for several hours, while police in Warsaw announced increased security in the capital.
Maria, a 20-year-old cafe employee in Warsaw, told Reuters she "almost burst into tears" on hearing the news. "Recent events, not just this one, but things happening lately, are really affecting our sense of security," she said. The daily newspaper Rzeczpospolita wrote in an editorial that the shooting had brought a "brutal end to an era in which Poland was considered an island of safety".
International leaders offered condolences. The UK prime minister, Andy Burnham, said he was "shocked and saddened by the appalling shooting in Kraków today", adding that his thoughts were with the families of those killed and all those affected. Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy called the attack a shocking crime and said his country stood in solidarity with its neighbour. France's Emmanuel Macron spoke of "shock and disbelief", German chancellor Friedrich Merz said Germany stood with Poland "as a friend and partner in these difficult times", and Italy's Giorgia Meloni condemned the "vile and unacceptable act of violence".
