Krakow Main Square shooting suspect dies in hospital, police say

Published on 9 November 2026 - 7:59 GMT+1 A man who is suspected of opening fire on the public in Krakow's Main Square, Poland, killing six people and injuring 15, including two police officers, has died. Among those killed were four Polish citizens, a British citizen and an Austrian citizen. ADVERTISEMENT ADVERTISEMENT After exchanging fire with the police, the attacker was wounded, detained and taken to hospital. Doctors had described his condition as critical. The death of the attacker was announced by the Lesser Poland police on X. "We inform you that the perpetrator of the tragic events died in hospital in the early hours of today," they wrote. The information was also confirmed by the Lesser Poland voivode, Krakow's region head, Krzysztof Klęczar, on TVN24, a Polish 24/7 news channel. "At 4:30, the perpetrator of the attack died; he died in one of Krakow's hospitals," he said. He also reported that "the condition of the remaining injured, there are at this moment 15 of them in six Krakow hospitals, remains unchanged". The attacker was a 24-year-old Polish citizen who lived in Ostrowiec Świętokrzyski in the Świętokrzyskie region, north of Krakow. The man had no previous convictions and had not been on record. He held a firearms licence and, as the police reported, he probably fired shots from one of the weapons for which he had a permit. Authorities said the man had been "fascinated by far-right ideologies", and Prime Minister Donald Tusk called the shooting — the deadliest in the country since the end of communism in 1989 — an act of "terrorism". Three bodies in the flat In the flat occupied by the 24-year-old alleged perpetrator of the attack, police officers found the bodies of three people: a 53-year-old man, a 52-year-old woman and a 21-year-old woman. The authorities established that the dead were the closest family members of the attacker, his parents and his sister. "On the bodies of these people, whom we found in the flat, we identified injuries which we assess as gunshot wounds. The cause and nature of death will be clarified. The bodies have been secured for detailed examinations," said junior inspector Kamil Tokarski, spokesperson for the Świętokrzyskie police. In line with the prosecutor's office announcements, autopsies of the six people who died in the attack in Krakow and of the three murder victims in Ostrowiec Świętokrzyski are to begin on Monday morning. Prosecutor Eryk Stasielak of the National Prosecutor's Office said that, due to the nature and extent of the gunshot wounds, the examinations could take around two days. Based on the findings so far, the same perpetrator is believed to have been responsible for both attacks. Investigators are clarifying both the course of events in Krakow and the circumstances of the deaths of the immediate family members of the 24-year-old man suspected of carrying out the attack.