A gunman drove into Kraków's main market square on Saturday afternoon and fired from his vehicle at people in the street, killing six bystanders and wounding at least fifteen others before police stopped him, according to Tagesspiegel. Three more bodies were later found at the suspect's home, bringing the death toll to nine.
The suspect is a 25-year-old Polish man named Michal O., known to police, who according to investigators reached the square at around 3 p.m. A police spokesperson told the broadcaster TVN24 that he wore military-style clothing and used a military-type long weapon, possibly a semi-automatic AR-15 rifle. Officers seized further weapons and ammunition from his car.
According to Tagesspiegel, the dead include three Polish women and a British citizen, a detail the police of the Małopolska region gave on X. Krzysztof Kleczar, the regional governor, said at least fifteen people were hurt, twelve of them in critical or life-threatening condition, the PAP news agency reported. He gave the figures on Polsat News.
Why it matters
The attack is the deadliest of its kind in Poland in recent memory and has struck a country already arguing about political violence. Interior Minister Marcin Kierwiński said within hours of the shooting that the perpetrator was "fascinated by far-right ideologies," and that "everything" pointed that way, Tagesspiegel reports. The remark has put the question of motive at the centre of a national debate, at a moment when parties on the right hold a large share of the electorate and the country is due to vote in autumn 2027.
President Karol Nawrocki declared two days of national mourning for Sunday and Monday. The defence minister described the shooting as "an act of terror," according to Tagesspiegel.
Three bodies found at the suspect's house
The scale of the crime became clear only gradually. Officers later went to the suspect's house, roughly a two-hour drive from Kraków, and flew a drone over it because of suspicions that explosives might be inside. The footage showed three dead people — two women and a man — who Prime Minister Donald Tusk said were probably the gunman's closest relatives.
Tusk gave no further detail on the background and said police, security services and prosecutors would do everything possible to publish information about the motive as quickly as they could. The suspect, a craftsman by trade, comes from Ostrowiec Świętokrzyski, about 200 kilometres away, according to the authorities.
Police said officers used their firearms while trying to detain him and that he was seriously wounded. He returned fire, but the officers were able to take him into custody. Tusk said on X that three police officers were hurt and that one of them was fighting for his life. Videos circulating on social media show a single officer, himself already shot, ending the exchange of fire and stopping the attacker on his own, Tagesspiegel reports.
Witnesses describe chaos on the square
People on the square described sudden panic. "Only now is the adrenaline easing off," one person told Polsat News. "In the first moment there was great chaos. People started moving frantically. I saw overturned tables." Another witness said: "We even saw the shooter. We hid in the back rooms. It all happened so suddenly."
A further witness told the broadcaster that people ran in every direction. "Suddenly a car drove up and a man started shooting out of the window," the person said. The attacker wore a helmet or a mask, and his face could not be seen.
Tusk wrote on X that the police had begun investigating, offered his condolences to the families of the victims and praised the officers' "heroic" conduct. He also appealed to politicians "of every stripe": "Do not exploit this tragedy. We will clarify all the circumstances of this crime."
Reaction came from across Europe. Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was among those who expressed horror and sympathy, Tagesspiegel reports.
The shooting follows a series of knife attacks at Polish schools about a month ago, which Tusk attributed to a growing, nihilistic violent extremism fuelled by the glorification of violence on social networks. Tagesspiegel notes that anti-Ukrainian assaults have become more frequent in Poland and that hostility toward Germany has also been on the rise.
What happens next: prosecutors are expected to set out further findings on the suspect's motive, while the wounded — including the suspect and a police officer — remain in hospital.
