Reykjavik, Iceland. Photograph by Bjørn Giesenbauer
Police in Iceland have shot and killed a man in the first fatal armed police operation in the Scandinavian country.
Police officers were called to an apartment in the Reykjavik suburb of Arbaer after an older man fired a shotgun from inside his flat. When the unarmed police arrived on the scene they were shot at by the gunman, and the special armed unit was called in for support.
Witnesses then say a smoke-bomb was thrown into the flat in an attempt to subdue the gunman before the armed response unit entered the building. Members of the unit then fired at the gunman in an altercation, with the man later dying from his injuries in hospital.
Gun-crime is extremely rare in the small country, which has a population of 320,000, and this was the first occasion that armed officers had shot and killed a man during a policing operation. National Commissioner of the Icelandic Police Haraldur Johannessen said:
“The police regrets this incident and wishes to extend its condolences to the man’s family”
