(AFP) Austria acknowledged Wednesday there had been security failings leading up to the deadly gun rampage in Vienna by a convicted Islamic State sympathiser.
Interior Minister Karl Nehammer said intelligence services had received a warning from neighbouring Slovakia that the assailant had tried to buy ammunition, but that “a failure of communication” had followed.
The gunman, identified as 20-year-old dual Austrian-Macedonian national Kujtim Fejzulai, was killed by police after going on a shooting spree in Vienna on Monday evening that left four people dead.
Police detained 14 people in the wake of the shooting, the first major attack in Austria for decades and the first blamed on a jihadist.
They were “aged 18 to 28, from minority communities and some aren’t Austrian citizens,” Nehammer said.
