Gunman Who Killed Six in Kraków Dies in Hospital as Poland Opens Terrorism Inquiry

A 24-year-old gunman who sprayed gunfire across Kraków's historic Main Market Square on Saturday died of his injuries in hospital on Monday morning, Polish police confirmed, two days after an attack that killed six people in the square and three more at his family's home in a town 160 kilometers away.

Police named the attacker as Michał Oksiński. According to Al Jazeera's reporting on his death, he drove through the center of Kraków shortly after 3 p.m. Saturday and fired at random from his car as he passed through the medieval square, one of Europe's largest and most heavily visited plazas. Officers shot and wounded him within minutes; he underwent at least three surgeries before dying Monday. Kraków-area governor Krzysztof Klęczar said there had been "a constant struggle to save this man's life, despite the evil he had committed."

Nine victims, dozens wounded

Six people died in the square: three Polish women aged 47, 53 and 61, a Polish man in his 50s, a 32-year-old British man and a 51-year-old Austrian woman. Sixteen others were wounded, 11 of them Polish, with victims and survivors also including citizens of the United Kingdom, Germany, Russia and Portugal, the interior ministry said. That evening, investigators searching Oksiński's home in Ostrowiec Świętokrzyski found the bodies of his parents, 53 and 52, and his 21-year-old sister; prosecutors believe he killed them before driving to Kraków.

Two police officers, Jakub Kulik and Artur Morański, were critically wounded in the gunfight that ended the rampage; both emerged from medically induced comas on Sunday. An interior ministry spokeswoman described Kulik's condition as "serious but stable." A public fundraiser for the two officers and their families had collected more than 3.5 million zloty, roughly €777,000, within two days, and local hospitals reported being overwhelmed by blood-donation volunteers.

Poland's National Prosecutor's Office has opened a terrorism investigation, treating the Kraków killings and the three deaths at the family home as the work of the same person. Interior Minister Marcin Kierwiński said early evidence pointed to the suspect holding "very, very radical views" and that he "may have been fascinated by far-right ideologies," before walking the claim back a day later, telling broadcaster TVN that this was only an "initial hypothesis" and that no motive had been confirmed. Oksiński held a legal firearms license and is believed to have used an AR-15-style rifle; additional weapons were recovered from his car.

A rare shock for Poland

Gun violence of this scale is almost unheard of in Poland, which has among the lowest rates of civilian firearms ownership in Europe and had not previously experienced a mass public shooting. President Karol Nawrocki and Prime Minister Donald Tusk jointly signed a decree declaring two days of national mourning, and a silent march was held in Kraków on Monday evening. In its aftermath, several government ministers have called for tighter restrictions on firearms licensing, reopening a debate that had drawn little political attention in recent years.

What happens next: with the sole suspect dead, prosecutors say the terrorism case will continue, focused on documenting his movements, acquisition of weapons and any contact with extremist material, while the government weighs the firearms-licensing changes ministers have floated. Both wounded officers remain hospitalized, and authorities have not said when their recovery might allow full accounts of the attack's final moments.