One dead in attack at Danish debate on Islam

Several injuries and at least one death were reported following shots fired at a Copenhagen cafe where a meeting about freedom of speech was being held on Saturday. Danish police are investigating the shooting as a terrorist attack, a spokesman said.

Danish Prime Minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt agreed that the incident was a likely the work of terrorists, saying "Denmark has today been hit by a cynical act of violence. Everything leads us to believe that the shooting was a political attack and therefore a terrorist act."

The event was organized by Swedish artist Lars Vilks, who has faced threats for drawing a caricature of the prophet Mohammed as a dog in 2007.Vilks, along with the late Charlie Hebdo editor Stéphane "Charb" Charbonnier and novelist Salman Rushdie, has been on Al-Qaeda's most-wanted list for "insulting Islam."

Denmark's TV2 channel reported there were some 30 bullet holes in the window of the Krudttoenden cafe, and at least two people were seen being taken away on stretchers.

"I saw a masked man running past," said co-organizer Helle Merete Brix, adding that she was sure the attack was meant for Vilks.

Civilian death

Vilks and French Ambassador Francois Zimeray, who was also one of the speakers at the venue, were not injured at the event titled "Art, blasphemy and the freedom of expression."

"They shot from the outside (and) had the same intention as Charlie Hebdo, only they didn't manage to get in," Zimeray told French news agency AFP by telephone.

One civilian, a 40-year-old man, was killed and three Danish police officers were hurt in the shooting, police spokesman Henrik Blandebjerg said. An assailant who fled in a dark Volkswagen Polo was being sought in connection with the incident.

"I heard someone firing with an automatic weapon and someone shouting. Police returned the fire and I hid behind the bar. I felt surreal, like in a movie," Niels Ivar Larsen, one of the speakers at the event, told TV2.

French President Francois Hollande called the attack "deplorable" and said Danish Prime Minister Thorning-Schmidt would have the "full solidarity of France in this trial." French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve was travelling to Copenhagen as soon as possible.

Repeated target

Lars Vilks has received many death threats since his controversial 2007 drawings, which prompted al-Qaeda to place a $150,000 bounty on his head. He has lived under constant police protection since 2010, when in May of that year two men threw gas canisters through his window.

Two years ago, an American woman who called herself Jihad Jane was sentenced to a decade in prison for plotting to kill him.

Vilks was quickly escorted away from the cafe by bodyguards.

es/gsw (AP, dpa, Reuters)