As authorities in Austria conducted raids on 18 properties and made 14 arrests after a gunman killed four people in Vienna’s city center on Monday evening, European governments already consumed with handling the COVID-19 pandemic faced up to the fact that terrorism has returned.
Nations have reacted to recent attacks in Paris, Nice and now Vienna by raising their threat levels and introducing new measures to tackle extremism.
In reaction to the latest attack in Vienna, the United Kingdom upgraded its terrorism threat level to “severe” in advance of Thursday’s national COVID-19 lockdown.
The UK government said raising the level from “substantial” was a “precautionary measure”.
France has seen a spate of terror incidents involving “lone wolf” jihadists. Last month, French history teacher Samuel Paty was beheaded outside a school in a suburb of Paris.
As the French government launched new measures to tackle extremism, a Tunisian man fatally stabbed three people in a cathedral in Nice late last month.
The Daily Telegraph reported that British security sources said they feared the attacks in Nice and Vienna could have a “galvanizing” effect on potential terrorists seeking to emulate such acts and could create their own “momentum”.
The day after the attack in Vienna, Italian Foreign Minister Luigi Di Maio called on the European Union to adopt Patriot Act-style anti-terrorism measures in a social media post.
Agence France-Presse reported that Di Maio said Italy should implement tighter controls on mosques and act on illegal immigration. In addition, he said both his home country and the EU must raise their security levels.
Call for action
Di Maio said: “Europe and Italy itself cannot continue with just words. … The security of one state equals the security of all the others.”
The Vienna gunman, described by authorities as an extremist, murdered four people before police shot him dead, nine minutes after he opened fire in the city’s first district at 8 pm, multiple news agencies reported.
According to The Guardian, Vienna’s hospital association said late on Tuesday night that 23 people were injured with gunshot and knife wounds. It said seven were in critical condition.
People had been out enjoying the city’s nightlife just hours before the start of a COVID-19 lockdown when the attack happened.
There were fears initially that several gunmen had taken part in the attack, though Austria’s Interior Minister Karl Nehammer told reporters on Tuesday that evidence showed there was no second attacker.
The Islamic State claimed responsibility on Tuesday for the attack in a statement issued through its Amaq news agency along with a picture and video purporting to show the gunman, The Guardian reported.
The killer, Kujtim Fejzulai, was a 20-year-old dual Austrian and North Macedonian citizen.
Nehammer said the man had faked a renunciation of jihadism in a deradicalization program. He said the man had created the impression that he was eager to reintegrate into Austrian society, “all while being focused on destroying the system”.
Police have arrested 14 people who had links with the Vienna gunman, he added, though it was not clear what the 14 are suspected of.
