Oslo, Norway – A man armed with a bow and arrow killed five people and injured two others on Wednesday in the Norwegian city of Kongsberg, police said.
Police said the suspect was in custody.
“The man used a bow and arrow for some of the attacks,” police chief Oyvind Aas told reporters. He said the police were probing whether other weapons were also used.
Aas said, “The man has been caught… Now that we have the information, this man single-handedly carried out these actions.”
An off-duty police officer was among the injured.
The newspaper VG featured pictures of an arrow stuck in the wall of a wood-paneled building.
Norway had the worst death toll in any attack since 2011, when right-wing extremist Anders Behring Breivik killed 77 people, most of them teenagers, in the youth camp.
The attacks on Wednesday hit “a large area” of Kongsberg, a municipality of about 28,000 people in southeastern Norway, 42 miles from the capital Oslo.
The government said the police had launched a major investigation.
“The report coming out of Kongsberg tonight is frightening,” Prime Minister Erna Solberg said at a news conference.
“I understand a lot of people are scared, but it’s important to emphasize that the police are now in control,” she said.
After the attacks, the Directorate of Police said it had ordered officers across the country to carry firearms. Norwegian police are usually unarmed but officers have guns and rifles when needed.
“This is an additional precaution. There is no indication to the police so far that there has been any change in the national threat level,” the directorate said in a statement.
Aas said police would investigate whether the attack was a terrorist act.
The ministry said that Norway’s Minister of Justice and Public Security, Monica Mland, has received an update about the attacks and is monitoring the situation closely.