POLAND began two days of national mourning yesterday after a gunman killed six people in Krakow’s historic main square, an attack the government said may have been inspired by far-right ideology.
Saturday’s shooting shocked a country that had prided itself on being safer than many of its Western European neighbours, and deepened public concern about extreme views following school stabbings in October that officials have linked to inflammatory content online.
Nationalist opposition politicians, however, questioned the grounds on which the government said far-right ideology could have led to the shooting that left 16 people wounded in addition to those killed.
Those hurt included two police officers and the suspected gunman, a 24-year-old Polish man. He remains in critical condition in hospital, local authorities said.
Krakow’s old town is a Unesco World Heritage Site that attracts visitors from around the globe.
One of the people who died was identified as a British citizen and another as Austrian, while five foreign nationals – from Austria, Britain, Germany, Portugal and Russia – were among the wounded.
In addition to the six killed in Krakow’s main square, police found the bodies of the suspect’s parents and sister at his home in Ostrowiec Swietokrzyski, about 200 km (124 miles) north of Krakow.
Prosecutor’s office spokesperson Daniel Prokopowicz said it was “highly likely” the killings in Ostrowiec Swietokrzyski and Krakow were carried out by the same person, but said investigations were ongoing.
Prokopowicz said the three bodies in the suspect’s home had gunshot wounds and that firearms and a significant quantity of ammunition were recovered from the property.
Interior Minister Marcin Kierwinski on Saturday said everything points to the attacker having held “very, very radical views” and being “fascinated by far-right ideologies,” prompting a reaction from the socially conservative and nationalist PiS.
“If Kierwinski has misinformed the public, he should face political consequences. We demand immediate explanations and access to information that he had based his statements on,” Przemyslaw Czarnek, deputy head of PiS, wrote on X.
Yesterday, Kierwinski said he was not retracting his earlier statements, but that an investigation into the shooter’s motive was ongoing.
“We are not passing judgement,” he told broadcaster TVN24. “Always, there are initial hypotheses, information and evidence ... These are things now being checked by the police and I will not elaborate. Nobody is walking anything back.”
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