Poland mourns Krakow attack as investigators cite far-right motives
Seven Lights
Poland’s government declared two days of national mourning Saturday after a gunman drove into Krakow’s Main Market Square, opened fire on pedestrians and killed six people in an attack Prime Minister Donald Tusk called an act of “terrorism.” Interior Minister Marcin Kierwinski said the gunman was “fascinated by far-right ideologies” and held “ultranationalist views.”
Tusk said two women and a man, most likely members of the attacker’s immediate family, were found dead at his home, bringing the toll to nine. At least 15 people were wounded, five of them foreigners; an interior ministry spokesman said the injured included Austrian, German, Portuguese, Russian and British nationals. Poland’s police chief, Marek Boron, confirmed a British citizen among the dead.
The suspect, a Polish citizen born in 2002, drove onto the square shortly after 3 p.m. local time and fired at random people, police said. He wore military-style fatigues and a bulletproof vest and used a semi-automatic rifle similar to the American AR-15. Police shot and wounded him, and he was in serious condition after a second operation. A Krakow police spokeswoman, Katarzyna Cislo, said he kept firing at officers even after being hit. Officers found several weapons and a large quantity of ammunition in his car.
Two officers were wounded as they tried to stop him, one critically with three gunshot wounds. A tram was shot at in the square, shattering the driver’s cab window, and no one aboard was injured. Kierwinski said there were “no reasons to believe” more than one attacker was involved.
Defence Minister Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz denied reports that the suspect had been a soldier, saying he “was not and is not a soldier in the Polish Armed Forces and has never had anything to do with the military.” The motive remained unknown.
Tusk appealed to politicians “of all stripes” not to “exploit this tragedy.” President Karol Nawrocki said he awaited “a full explanation of the circumstances surrounding these dramatic events.” Prime Minister Andy Burnham of Britain, President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine and the European Union’s top diplomat, Kaja Kallas, offered condolences.
Krakow, Poland’s second-largest city and a former capital, receives some 15 million visitors a year, most passing through the Main Market Square. The square remained sealed Saturday evening as forensic investigators worked. Poland’s deadliest mass shooting before Saturday dated to the fall of communism in 1989; the country has been on high alert since a series of stabbings in October that Tusk denounced as a “cult of violence.” Police recorded more than 50,000 new firearms licences in 2025, bringing the national total to 411,000.