2020 Vienna attack

2020 Vienna attack
Part of Islamic terrorism in Europe
Schwedenplatz in 2012
Location	Schwedenplatz, Vienna, Austria
Coordinates	48°12′38″N 16°22′37″E
Date	2 November 2020 (2020-11-02) 20:00 (UTC+01:00)
Target	Civilians
Attack type	Mass shooting
Weapons	Rifle handgun machete
Deaths	5 (including the perpetrator)
Injured	23
Perpetrator	Kujtim Fejzullai
Motive	Islamic extremism

The 2020 Vienna attack was a series of shootings that occured on 2 November 2020 in Vienna, Austria. A lone gunman opened fire with a rifle in the historic city center. Four civilians were killed in the attack and 23 others were injured, seven critically, including a police officer. The attacker was killed by police; he was identified as an ISIL sympathizer. Officials said that the attack was an incident of Islamist terrorism.

The Austrian Interior Minister Karl Nehammer said that there were six different shooting locations.

Background

Before the 2020 incident, the most serious terrorist incident in Austria in the 21st century was the Vienna temple attack.

Attack

The attack began on 2 November 2020 around 20:00 local time in Schwedenplatz, Vienna, Austria, when a man started shooting with a rifle. He was also armed with a handgun and a machete.

Initially, it was reported by police and officials that multiple heavily-armed gunmen then opened fire with rifles, and that one of the gunmen was wearing a dummy explosives belt. It was later confirmed that there was a sole shooter, who was wearing a fake explosive belt. Initial reports also indicated that Vienna's main synagogue, the nearby Stadttempel, could have been the target of the attack. However, the synagogue was not directly targeted; Oskar Deutsch, the head of the Jewish Community of Vienna, said it was closed at the time of the shooting. A guard was critically injured outside the synagogue's grounds. The perpetrator attacked six other locations in the area, shooting mainly at passers-by and people at restaurants.

One report indicated an attacker shooting at people sitting outside cafes and bars on Judengasse and Seitenstettengasse in central Vienna. The shooting took place four hours before the midnight start of a nationwide lockdown as new COVID-19 restrictions came into force in Austria, including a curfew from 20:00 to 06:00 local time.

Casualties

Two men and two women, ages 21 to 44, were killed during the attack. They were identified as an Austrian, a German, a Chinese-Austrian, and a Macedonian Muslim. The perpetrator was also shot dead by the police at the scene.

Twenty-three other people were wounded with gunshot and stab wounds, including citizens from Slovakia, Luxembourg, Germany, Bosnia and Herzegovina, China, and Afghanistan. Seven suffered life-threatening injuries. Among the wounded were a security guard at the synagogue and a 28-year-old police officer who was in critical condition after being shot while responding to the attack. The wounded officer and an elderly woman were saved by a Palestinian and two Turkish-Austrian men, who carried them into safe places and to ambulances; after confronting the attacker, one of the Turkish-Austrians was shot and wounded. The three men were praised for their actions.

Investigation

Videos of the shooting surfaced, including one of the attacker shooting a civilian first with a rifle and then up close with a handgun. The police asked that witnesses not post videos and photographs on social media, but rather submit them to the authorities. As a result, the police received a large number of videos from the public following the attack, and a 35-member investigation team had examined 20% of them for evidence by the next day.

On the morning of 3 November, searches of apartments linked with the perpetrator took place, and in his home they found a stockpile of ammunition. Austrian authorities said at 01:00 that at least one gunman remained on the run, but that afternoon Nehammer said there was no indication of additional attackers. Officials stated that the attack was an act of Islamic terrorism.

ISIL claimed responsibility for the attack a day later, calling the attacker a "soldier of the caliphate" and posting one of his photos with guns and a knife, and released a video of the attacker pledging allegiance to the leader of ISIL, Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurashi. It was not clear, however, whether ISIS helped plan the attack; the group has a track record of claiming responsibility for lone wolf attacks.

Perpetrator

The perpetrator was identified as 20-year-old Kujtim Fejzullai. He was shot and killed at 20:09 local time.

Fejzullai was born in Mödling, a town south of Vienna, in 2000, where he grew up, and lived in the town of Sankt Pölten, 53 kilometres (33 mi) west of Vienna. He was a dual citizen of Austria and North Macedonia of Albanian ethnic origin and was known to the Austrian Office for the Protection of the Constitution and Counterterrorism. He had been sentenced to 22 months imprisonment in April 2019, after he tried to cross the Turkish border into Syria to join ISIL; however, he was paroled in December 2019, eight months into the sentence. He was one of around 90 Austrian Islamists who have tried to reach Syria. An Austrian official said that investigators believed that he had worshipped at a mosque that Austrian intelligence services suspected of promulgating extremism.

Hours before the attack, Fejzulai pledged allegiance to ISIS in Arabic in an Instagram post, using the name Abu Dujana al-Albani. In the post he held an assault rifle, handgun, and machete across his chest.

Aftermath

A large police deployment took place in Vienna right after the attack, and members of EKO Cobra and WEGA were brought in to hunt for the perpetrators. Vienna police said that SWAT teams entered the gunman's apartment using explosives, and a search of its surroundings was underway on 3 November. The Austrian Federal Army was deployed to secure buildings in Vienna. Roadblocks were set up around the city center. Enhanced checks were instituted at the nearby Czech border.

After a few hours, people were evacuated from nearby restaurants, bars, the Vienna State Opera, and the Burgtheater. The Viennese police asked pedestrians to avoid open spaces and public transport in the area, and then halted all trams and subways in central Vienna and asked people to shelter in place.

All synagogues, Jewish schools, institutions of the Jewish Community of Vienna, and kosher restaurants and supermarkets were closed the following day as a precaution after concerns were raised that the main synagogue had been the target, although soon after the attack it became clear that the target had been the general population, not the synagogue, which had been closed and empty at the time.

On 6 November, it was decided that two mosques in Ottakring and Meidling would be closed because "a positive attitude towards society and state" as a legal precondition was not fulfilled by the mosques.

The sister of one of the victims wrote in the Austrian newspaper Der Standard: "If you want to honor my sister and her memory, then I ask all of you not to react with hatred and exclusion, that would trample on everything that she stood for, lived for and advocated."

Criticism of media coverage

Oe24.at, as well as other "boulevard media", came under severe attack for publishing videos of the killings online. They drew more than 1,450 formal complaints sent to the Austrian press council for ethics violations, the largest number of complaints ever filed for a single incident. and causing an advertising boycott by multiple Austrian supermarkets and other companies.

See also

• List of terrorist incidents in 2020
• List of terrorist incidents linked to ISIL
• List of Islamist terrorist attacks
• 1981 Vienna synagogue attack
• Vienna temple attack