Norway bow attack probed as possible terrorism

Police had previously flagged suspected killer of five as having been radicalized

Investigators in Norway are searching for a motive after a bow-and-arrow attack left five people dead on Wednesday evening.

With terrorism suspected, regional police chief Ole Bredrup Saeverud told reporters on Thursday morning the four women and man who died were aged between 50 and 70.

Two others, including an off-duty police officer, were seriously injured in the horrific incident that began shortly before 6:15 pm in the town of Kongsberg, a community of around 20,000 people 80 kilometers southwest of the capital, Oslo.

Saeverud said officers arrested and charged a 37-year-old Danish man on suspicion of carrying out the attacks. He said police had been in contact with the man in the past over fears he had become an extremist after converting to Islam.

The German state broadcaster Deutsche Welle quoted Saeverud as saying: "There, earlier, had been worries of the man having been radicalized."

An eyewitness told the television station TV2 she heard a disturbance and saw a woman taking cover.

She then saw a man standing on a street corner "with arrows in a quiver on his shoulder and a bow in his hand".

"Afterwards, I saw people running for their lives," she said. "One of them was a woman holding a child by the hand."

Prime Minister Erna Solberg, who was in the final few hours of her term in office when the attack happened, said in a statement: "I understand that many people are afraid, but it's important to emphasize that the police are now in control."

Jonas Gahr Stoere, who took over as prime minister on Thursday, at the helm of a center-left coalition, called the attack "gruesome and brutal".

The suspect's lawyer, Fredrik Neumann, told reporters his client was being questioned at a police station in the town of Drammen, and was cooperating.

Sky News said prosecutor Ann Iren Svane Matthiassen claimed the suspect had admitted carrying out the killings, which Norway's Aftenposten newspaper said began in a Coop Extra supermarket and continued in other parts of the town during the following half hour.

The Norwegian news agency NTB said the attacker used other weapons, in addition to the bow, and is believed to have acted alone.

But the French news agency Agence France-Presse said Norway's intelligence service, known as PST, is investigating whether others could have been involved, and whether terrorism was the motive.

"It is all conjecture at the moment," AFP quoted spokesman Martin Bernsen as saying.

The BBC said Norway's Police Directorate ordered all officers to carry guns as a precaution in the wake of the killings, in case other attacks were imminent. Usually, law enforcement officers in the Scandinavian nation do not carry weapons.