Poland just suffered a terror attack that ended with a gunman killing his own family
20 hours ago · 8 November 2026Share
Empty Old Town Market Square in Kraków during the COVID-19 pandemic in Poland, April 2020. File photo. Krzysztof Zgłobicki · CC BY-SA 4.0
Nine people are confirmed dead after a shooting in Kraków's Main Market Square.
It happened a few hours before three more bodies turned up at the gunman's own house.
So here's how it unfolded.
A 25-year-old Polish man drove into the square around 3pm, roughly 13 hours ago now.
He got out and started firing at random. He had a military-style, semi-automatic rifle, similar to an AR-15. He was wearing military-style clothing and a bulletproof vest.
Six people died right there in the square. Four women, two men.
At least 15 people were wounded. Two of them were police officers who confronted him. One officer was shot three times. He's still in a critical condition after surgery.
Police shot the gunman. He was wounded and taken to hospital.
And then it got worse.
A few hours later, police searched the suspect's home. It's in a town called Ostrowiec Świętokrzyski, about 120 miles north of Kraków.
Inside, they found three more bodies. Two women, one man.
Prime Minister Donald Tusk says there are strong indications these three are the suspect's own family. His parents. His sister.
That's nine dead in total.
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Old Town, southern part near Wawel Castle, 2025, bird's eye view, Kraków, Poland. File photo. Igor123121 · CC BY 4.0
Donald Tusk is calling this terrorism. He says Poland has never before seen an act of terrorism this drastic. And on the family deaths, he says quote "we have the next acts of this tragedy".
So what's driving this? Marcin Kierwiński, Poland's Interior Minister, says the suspect appeared fascinated by far-right ideologies and held ultra-nationalist views.
There were early reports he might have been a soldier. Poland's Defence Minister, Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz, shut that down directly. He says quote "the man was not and is not a soldier in the Polish Armed Forces".
Now here's a detail worth sitting with. Police are checking whether the gunman took the rifle from his own family home. His father reportedly held several registered sports firearms licences.
If that's confirmed, it means the weapon used in the square may have come from the exact house where three people were later found dead.
Police say he acted alone. No evidence of a second attacker.
One British citizen was among the six killed in the square. Five foreign nationals were wounded — from Britain, Austria, Germany, Portugal and Russia.
Three of the women killed in the square have been identified as Polish nationals. Two victims are still unidentified.
And the three people found at the family home haven't been officially identified either. Police haven't said whether they died before or after the square attack.
Donald Tusk has announced a period of national mourning. Kraków's city government has separately announced local mourning running into the middle of this week.
This comes weeks after a wave of stabbings in Poland that Donald Tusk already called a "cult of violence". It also comes after Poland issued more than 50,000 new firearms licences last year, taking the national total to 411,000.
So what don't we know? Why the suspect is believed to have killed his own family. Whether that happened before or after he drove into the square. And what, if anything, connects the two beyond the one man who did both.
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