White House National Security Adviser: ‘There is no justification for hatred and violence like this’.
I have just spoken on the phone to Gernot Gruber, a 24-year-old business student in Vienna. When the attacks began, Gruber was walking to the Hard Rock cafe in Vienna’s city centre, 100m from one of the attacks.
He had his headphones in, he said and when he took them out to greet the friend he was meeting for dinner, he heard several loud bangs.
“If you hear these noises in Austria you don’t think they’re gunshots, you really don’t,†he said. He thought they might be fireworks set off by people celebrating before the lockdown began. But when he and his friend entered the Hard Rock cafe, they heard an American saying he thought the sound was gunshots.
He and his friend followed the man downstairs as upstairs the restaurant staff locked the doors and told people to get away from the windows. A few minutes later, special forces police entered the building and told everyone to leave and run towards Schwedenplatz, away from the attack which was happening 100m away.
The exclamation mark on the map below shows where the attack occurred.
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At 3.30am in Vienna, there are still helicopters circling overhead, readers have told me. Because it was the last night before Vienna’s lockdown came into effect, many people were taking the opportunity to go out for one last time.
While some who were in the city have finally made it home, others are spending the night in the places they were at when the attacks began. I have heard from the friends of lawyers sleeping at their offices, from attendees at a barre class that ended shortly after 8pm who are sleeping in the studio and from Markus Husa, who was at a restaurant nearby.
He says that he started to receive text messages at 9pm and that “at that time the first people were leaving the restaurant we were at, unaware of the situation.†His group informed the restaurant staff, who locked the doors and told people to stay inside.
“As I understand now, one site of shootings was a mere 100 meters from our location. It was difficult to get home as public transport didn’t stop anywhere near the first district, it was impossible to get a taxi and the city was to be avoided. Fortunately, a friend picked us up by car,†he says.
He says that friends of his were held in cinemas and theatres and have just arrived home.
We didn’t experience any first hand threat nor police in particular. Friends of mine were held for considerable stretches of time at theatres and cinemas, venues were evacuated by police, many of us just got home in past hour or so.
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