Copenhagen cops shoot dead man believed to be behind gun attacks

Copenhagen police said Sunday they had shot dead a man believed to be behind twin shootings in the Danish capital that left two people dead and five wounded. The exchange of fire took place in the multicultural inner-city neighbourhood of Noerrebro where police had been keeping an address under observation earlier in the day, after the man opened fire on them. Investigator Joergen Skov says the preliminary investigation says nothing that suggests that there were other gunmen involved in the shootings  A 55-year-old man was killed Saturday when a gunman sprayed bullets at Copenhagen’s Krudttoenden cultural centre as it hosted a seminar. Hours later, a man was shot in the head and killed early Sunday near Copenhagen’s main synagogue in the city centre.

The police are now investigating if the person could be behind the shootings at Krudttoenden and the synagogue in Krystalgade.

Danish police in a statement

Two policemen were wounded in the shooting at the synagogue, and three more officers hurt in the cultural centre attack. Police said they did not have enough information to confirm whether the two shootings, which come just weeks after a series of bloody Islamist attacks in Paris that left 17 people dead, were linked. But Lars Vilks — the Swedish artist whose controversial Prophet Mohammed cartoon sparked worldwide protests in 2007 — was among the speakers at the cultural centre and believes he was the target of the attack. The cartoonist has been under police protection since August 2007, when he published an extremely controversial caricature of the Prophet Muhammad in Swedish newspaper Nerikes Allehanda.

At first there was panic. People crawled down under tables. My bodyguards quickly pulled me away.

Swedish artist Lars Vilks