Several Casulaties Reported After Shooting In Poland. The Suspect Was Shot By Police.

Six people have been killed and several more have been injured as a result of a shooting in Poland’s second largest city of Kraków, local law enforcement has reported.

“Five people were killed and a dozen or so injured in the incident in the Main Market Square. The perpetrator was shot by police officers and is currently being taken to hospital. Emergency services are still working at the scene,” Małopolska Policja, the police branch responsible for the southern Polish region of Małopolska (Lesser Poland), wrote on X shortly after 10AM eastern time.

The police later confirmed a sixth victim had succumbed to their injuries and died.

Local police said that the attacker, who has been identified as a Polish citizen, had driven his car into the square and started shooting at around 15:00 local time (9AM eastern).

Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said that he was “being kept informed by the Minister of the Interior about the situation in Kraków following the tragic shooting. The police are investigating the background and all the circumstances of the attack.”

“I am deeply concerned by reports of the tragic events in central Kraków. My thoughts are with the victims, those injured and their families … The head of the National Security Bureau is on his way to Kraków,” Polish President Karol Nawrocki reported.

Some Polish politicians responded more aggressively to the news; right-wing Polish Member of the European Parliament (MEP) Dominik Tarczyński reposted a video which appears to show a policeman shooting the attacker, who was wearing Polish military garb, and wrote “Shoot all terrorists! No questions asked.”

At the time of writing, the motive of the attack is unknown.

However, the shooting comes at a turbulent time for the eastern European nation. A recent wave of bomb threats targeting European commercial flights have also affected some flights flying to and from Poland.

Three aircraft belonging to Poland’s flag carrier airline LOT have been subject to such threats and Warsaw’s Modlin Airport was briefly closed on Tuesday when one of the threatened flights was diverted there.

The country has also been the site of a recent political crisis, caused by friction between the pro-European government of Prime Minister Donald Tusk and the right-wing opposition, led by the Law and Justice (PiS) party.

Protests amongst PiS supporters erupted on October 30 after Bogdan Święczkowski, the right-wing and PiS-aligned president of Poland’s highest constitutional court – The Constitutional Tribunal – was suspended by government-backed judges.

Święczkowski was appointed by the previous PiS government, and was accused by Tusk’s pro-EU governing coalition of being a political appointee and a PiS loyalist unfit for judicial office.

The suspension caused another PiS ally, President Nawrocki, to cancel a state visit to Senegal and return to the country; Nawrocki then accused Tusk of “unlawful” interference in the work of the court.

It is unclear if the attack is related to either the bomb threats or the internal Polish political dispute. Tusk, however, asked that “politicians of all stripes” refrain from “exploit[ing] this tragedy.”