Large Terror Attack in Vienna Targeting Jews

Times of Israel:

A shooting attack was underway at several sites Monday evening in central Vienna, including in the area of a synagogue and the offices of the Jewish community, killing up to seven people, according to Austrian media reports, prompting a large-scale police operation.

Austrian Interior Minister Karl Nehammer said the incidents appeared to be a terror attack with multiple perpetrators.

Vienna police confirmed there were six sites of attack with multiple attackers. Police initially confirmed one death and one terrorist killed.

The assessment in the Jewish community is that the attack was not directed at Vienna’s Jews, an opinion shared by officials in Jerusalem, Israel’s Channel 13 reported.

The Kurier newspaper said at least one of the fatalities was a police officer. Reports said at least 15 wounded people were taken to hospitals.

Police instructed the public to leave the city’s first district, where the attacks occurred. Cops were barring vehicles from nearing the area, Kurier reported.

A video showed at least four apparent perpetrators being rounded up by police and arrested, but reports indicated that more could still be at large.

In addition, reports said there had been an explosion, with one of the assailants possibly blowing himself up.

Videos circulating on social media showed multiple attackers firing shots, and assailants and cops shouting, as frightened residents looked on from their windows.

One video apparently featured a gunman yelling “Allahu akbar” (“God is greatest” in Arabic).

Oskar Deutsch, the head of the Jewish community in Vienna, said the shooting took place in the street where the city’s main synagogue is located, in the first district, but that it wasn’t clear whether the house of worship had been targeted. He said there were no casualties among the Jewish community.

Deutsch noted that the synagogue and the community offices were closed at the time of the shooting, and asked all community members to stay away from the area.

Jewish residents have reportedly been urged to stay in their homes, lock their doors and take off their kippa skullcaps when outside.

Rabbi Schlomo Hofmeister told The Associated Press that he saw at least one person fire shots at people sitting outside bars in the street below his window.

“They were shooting at least 100 rounds just outside our building,” Hofmeister said.

“All these bars have tables outside. This evening is the last evening before the lockdown,” he added. “As of midnight, all bars and restaurants will be closed in Austria for the next month and a lot of people probably wanted to use that evening to be able to go out.”

Shalom Berenholtz, who owns a restaurant in the area, told Israel’s Army Radio: “This is the nerve center of the Jewish community. It is an area secured 24 hours a day.”

“It was a gang of four gunmen,” he said. “One of them ran along the street opening fire with an automatic weapon.”

Berenholtz added that on Sunday night, all the restaurants in the area had been open, but they were closed Monday because of the new lockdown regulations.

Israel’s Diaspora Affairs Minister Omer Yankelevich tweeted: “Our thoughts and prayers are with Austria in these tragic and very hard hours.”

Vienna police tweeted that the exact circumstances of the incident were still being determined.

Police asked the public not to post videos from the scene, saying it endangered police and residents as the operation was still ongoing. Police also asked the public not to circulate “rumors.”

In September, Chancellor Sebastian Kurz announced that the Austrian government and the Jewish community had signed an agreement that would see federal funds to secure Jewish institutions increase threefold.

“The last weeks have shown that we have to act together to protect Jewish life in Austria even more determinedly,” Kurz wrote on his Twitter profile. “That’s why we as a state will support the Jewish community with its increased security costs.”

According to the agreement, which will be anchored in legislation, the Austrian government will pay €4 million (NIS 16 million, $4.7 million) to the Jewish community every year.

“With this historic step the Austrian government is manifesting Jewish life as a natural and inseparable part of Austria,” Deutsch, the head of the Jewish community, wrote in a letter sent to community members at the time.

The community has reached a “historic agreement with the federal government of Austria to safeguard and foster Jewish life in the long term,” he said.