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Attack suspect had already been flagged

ADANISH man suspected of a bow-and-arrow attack in a small Norwegian town that killed five people is a Muslim convert who was previously flagged as having been radicalised, police said.

Norway’s national security agency said the suspect’s actions “currently appear to be an act of terrorism”. The man is suspected of having shot at people in a number of locations in the town of Kongsberg on Wednesday evening. Several of the victims were in a supermarket, police said.

“There earlier had been worries of the man having been radicalised,” said police chief Ole B Saeverud during a news conference. He added that there were “complicated assessments related to the motive, and it will take time before this is clarified”.

Norway’s domestic security agency, known by its acronym PST, cited various aspects of the attack, that also wounded two people, in explaining its belief that the suspect’s actions “currently appear to be an act of terrorism”.

“Attacks on random people in public places are a recurring modus operandi among extremist Islamists carrying out terror in the West,” the domestic security agency said.

The agency said that “the most probable scenario of an extremely Islamist terrorist attack in Norway is an attack carried out by one or a few perpetrators with simple weapon types, against targets with few or no security measures”. It added that the suspect “is known to PST from before, without PST being able to provide further details about him”.

“The investigation will clarify in more detail what the incidents were motivated by,” the PST said in a statement.

The victims were four women and one man between the ages of 50 and 70.