Two people were killed and 14 were injured on Saturday in a shooting at a nightclub and on streets near the Norwegian capital, Oslo, Norwegian police said.
A suspect believed to be the sole perpetrator was arrested, police told reporters.
The crime scene spread from the London pub through a neighboring club to a nearby street where the suspect was arrested a few minutes after the shooting began, police spokesman Tore Barstad told the daily Aftenposten.
The London Pub is a popular gay bar and nightclub in central Oslo.
The pride parade scheduled for Saturday
Barstad said the reason was not immediately known and it was unclear if the shooting had any connection to the Pride parade to be held in Oslo on Saturday.
“Police are in contact with the organizers of the Pride event this Saturday. There will be an ongoing assessment of what steps the police should take to protect this event and whether this incident has any connection to Pride,” Barstad told journalists.
Police are concentrating on the site of the mass shooting. (Javad Parsa / NTB / The Associated Press)
Olav Roenneberg, a journalist for the Norwegian public broadcaster NRK, said he witnessed the shooting.
“I saw a man arrive at the scene with a bag. He grabbed a gun and started firing,” Roenneberg told NRK. “At first I thought it was a compressed air gun. Then the glass in the bar next door broke and I realized I had to run to take refuge.”
Hospital on red alert
Some 14 people were taken to hospital, some with serious injuries, police said.
Photographs published by the VG newspaper, the NRK station and others showed a large concentration of emergencies outside the pub, including police and ambulance workers.
Helicopters flew over central Oslo as ambulance sirens and police cars were heard throughout the city.
Oslo University Hospital said it had gone on red alert after the shooting.
Norway experienced one of the worst mass shootings in Europe in 2011 when a right-wing extremist killed 69 people on the island of Utoya after firing a bomb on Oslo that left eight dead.