Several people have been killed in a shooting at a shopping centre in Copenhagen, police chief inspector Søren Thomassen told a press conference in the Danish capital on Sunday.
A suspect, a 22-year-old Dane, was arrested after the shooting, Thomassen said. He said police have not ruled out the possibility of a terrorist attack, but that it was too early to make statements about the perpetrator's motive.
The police chief said several others were injured and that the situation was still very chaotic and uncertain.
Panic broke out at the Field's shopping mall in southern Copenhagen after shots were fired. While there was no indication of further perpetrators, police were working to secure the area, Thomassen said.
A large police contingent was deployed to the site after police were alerted around 5:30 pm (1530 GMT).
"We do not yet know exactly how many people are injured or dead, but it is very serious," Copenhagen Mayor Sophie H. Andersen wrote on Twitter, speaking of a "horrible" shooting.
Witnesses reported chaotic scenes. The shooter had worn dark clothes and was not masked, eyewitness Rikke Levandovski told Danish broadcaster TV2.
Another witness, Mahdi Al-Wazni, said the man had used a long gun.
Laurits Hermansen told Danish broadcaster DR he heard three or four very loud bangs while he was in a shop with his family. Then other people ran into the shop and reported hearing gunshots, after which he and his family fled through an emergency exit, the man said.
Other eyewitnesses also reported hearing shots in comments to the Jyllands-Posten newspaper. "You didn't know what was happening. Suddenly chaos broke out everywhere," 20-year-old Emilie Jeppesen told the paper. Her friend Astrid Kofoed Jørgensen said: "Everyone in the restaurant was sent to the kitchen, then we sat there and could hear three or four shots.
In the nearby Royal Arena, thousands were expected to attend a sold-out concert by British singer Harry Styles on Sunday evening, but media reported the show was cancelled following the shooting at the mall only around 650 metres away.
Several thousand fans who had already been let into the venue were waiting for the concert to start when the news broke. According to broadcaster TV2, they were then told that the show had been cancelled for security reasons and were asked to calmly leave the arena.
Organizers had earlier said the concert would go ahead as planned, in a post on Facebook, despite reports of shots at the nearby shopping centre. The decision was quickly slammed by hundreds of people on social media.
This is the second shooting in a Scandinavian city in little more than a week, after an attack on a bar in central Oslo claimed the lives of two men and injured a further 21 people last weekend.
