Copenhagen police said early on Sunday that they had shot dead a man who opened fire on officers hours after two people were killed and five wounded in twin shootings in the Danish capital.
In the first shooting, a 40-year-old man was killed when a gunman sprayed bullets at Copenhagen's Krudttønden cultural centre as it hosted a seminar at which Lars Vilks — the Swedish artist whose controversial Prophet Muhammad cartoon sparked worldwide protests in 2007 — was among the speakers.
Hours later, a man was shot in the head and killed early Sunday near Copenhagen's main synagogue in the city centre.
Two policemen were wounded in the shooting at the synagogue, and three more officers were hurt in the cultural centre attack.
"The police are now investigating if the person could be behind the shootings at Krudttønden and the synagogue in Krystalgade," police said in a statement.
The exchange of fire took place in the multicultural inner-city neighbourhood of Nørrebro where police had been keeping an address under observation earlier in the day.
"At one point a person who could be interesting in relation to the investigation arrived at the site," police said.
After police called out to him "he opened fire against the police and was thereafter shot," the statement added.
No police officers were injured in the exchange of fire which followed a huge manhunt in Denmark overnight after the attacker fled following both shootings.
Police said they did not have enough information to confirm whether the two shootings, which come just weeks after a series of bloody Islamist attacks in Paris left 17 people dead, were linked.
Michael Gelvan, chairman of the Nordic Jewish Security Council, told AFP that a bar mitzvah, or Jewish coming of age ceremony, had been underway inside the synagogue that was targeted and that the "young man" had been responsible for "access control" when he was shot.
"We don't know anything yet, it's too early to guess," he said about possible motives behind the killing.
"But it's a copy of what happened in Paris," he said, referring to the deadly attacks at satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo and a Jewish supermarket in January.
"I dare not think about what would have happened if [the killer] had access to the congregation," the chairman of The Jewish Community in Denmark, Dan Rosenberg Asmussen, told broadcaster TV2 News.
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