SYDNEY, Australia — A lone gunman fired a number of gunshots inside of Canberra Airport Sunday, prompting a fast evacuation and grounding flights in Australia’s capital town, consistent with witnesses and the police.
In a observation, the Australian Federal Police mentioned that the police have been known as to the airport about 1:30 p.m. native time, and that one particular person used to be taken into custody and a firearm recovered. No accidents had been reported, and it used to be believed no person used to be concerned within the episode instead of the individual in custody.
Images posted on-line through vacationers and newshounds on the scene confirmed damaged home windows and the plain arrest of the suspect, handcuffed and detained through the police.
Mass or random shootings in Australia are very uncommon. After a sequence of mass shootings within the 90s, the rustic enacted strict gun regulations, and stabbings at the moment are the commonest reason for loss of life for homicides.
In 2021, there have been simply 370 homicides and similar crimes, reminiscent of manslaughter, consistent with executive statistics, in a rustic of about 25 million. And Canberra, the capital, has a tendency to be even more secure than many of the nation’s main towns.
Many Australians reacted with marvel to the scoop of the capturing.
Witnesses described a scene of horrifying, sudden chaos. At round 1:30 p.m., they mentioned they noticed a person capturing within the air now not some distance from the principle check-in counters of the open, fashionable airport.
A girl who gave her identify most effective as Helen, who used to be flying to Melbourne together with her husband, instructed The Guardian that the person used to be middle-aged, “clean-cut” and keeping a pistol.
She mentioned she heard round a half-dozen photographs.
“Security just said ‘Run, run’, so we all ran outside,” she mentioned.
Dan Bourchier, a journalist for ABC, tweeted he used to be sitting in a aircraft at the airport tarmac, and “the captain just told us the AFP is doing a ‘security sweep’ of the airport after we were told the airport has been evacuated.”
