Five people including an assailant have died and 17 others are wounded after a shooting in the heart of Vienna hours before a coronavirus lockdown started, Austrian authorities said.

The dead attacker was a 20-year-old Austrian-North Macedonian dual national who had a previous terror conviction.

Two men and two women died from their injuries after the attack on Monday evening, Chancellor Sebastian Kurz said. The suspected attacker was shot and killed by police.

Vienna’s hospital service said seven people are in life-threatening condition after the attack, the Austrian news agency APA reported. In total, 17 people are being treated in hospital, with gunshot wounds and cuts.

“It is now confirmed that yesterday’s attack was clearly an Islamist terror attack,” Mr Kurz said. “It was an attack out of hatred — hatred for our fundamental values, hatred for our way of life, hatred for our democracy in which all people have equal rights and dignity.”

Interior minister Karl Nehammer later said that the dead assailant, who had roots in the Balkan nation of North Macedonia, had a previous conviction under a law that punishes membership of terrorist organisations.

The attacker, named as Kujtim Fejzulai, was sentenced to 22 months in prison in April 2019 because he had tried to travel to Syria to join the so-called Islamic State group. He was granted early release in December under juvenile law.

Fifteen house searches have taken place and several people have been arrested, Mr Nehammer said, adding that the attacker “was equipped with a fake explosive vest and and an automatic rifle, a handgun and a machete to carry out this repugnant attack on innocent citizens”.

Authorities are still trying to determine whether further attackers are on the run. People in Vienna were urged to stay at home if possible on Tuesday and children did not have to go to school. Some 1,000 police officers were on duty in Vienna on Tuesday morning.

Among those wounded in the attack was a police officer, said Mr Nehammer. The 28-year-old was in hospital but was no longer in a life-threatening condition.

The shooting began shortly after 8pm on Monday near Vienna’s main synagogue as many people were enjoying a last night of open restaurants and bars before a month-long coronavirus lockdown, which started at midnight.

Vienna police chief Gerhard Puerstl said the attacker was killed at 8.09pm.

Mr Kurz said: “We are victims of a despicable terror attack in the federal capital.”

His government on Tuesday ordered three days of official mourning, with flags on public buildings to be flown at half-mast until Thursday.

Unverified footage posted on social media showed a gunman walking through the streets, apparently shooting at people at random, wounding several.

Rabbi Schlomo Hofmeister said he saw at least one person shoot at people sitting outside at bars in the street below his window near the city’s main synagogue.

“They were shooting at least 100 rounds just outside our building,” he said. “All these bars have tables outside. This evening is the last evening before the lockdown.”

Authorities said residents have uploaded 20,000 videos of the attack to police.

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Pope Francis starts a trip on Sunday to Bulgaria and North Macedonia where he will have to tread carefully because of sensitive relations with the dominant Eastern Orthodox Church in the two Balkan countries where Catholics are a tiny minority.

Bulgaria, a country of 7.1 million people, is home to just 58,000 Catholics, while North Macedonia, with a population of 2 million, has just 15,000 Catholics, less than some single neighbourhood parishes in Rome.

One purpose of the three-day trip is to improve relations with the Orthodox churches as part of the Vatican’s push for eventual unity between the Eastern and Western branches of Christianity that split in 1054.

But that task is delicate because Orthodox churches in both countries are caught up in their own internal conflicts, which have spilled over into official relations with Catholics.

Bulgarian Orthodox leaders have ordered clergy not to take part in prayers or services with the pope, saying its laws do not permit it. But the pope will meet Orthodox Patriarch Neophyte and visit an Orthodox cathedral in Sofia.

“Receiving the pope but not praying with him is a contradiction in terms,” said Tamara Grdzelidze, professor of Ecumenical Theology and visiting fellow at St. Michael’s College at the University of Toronto. She suggested that the choice was due to internal disputes among Bulgarians.

A statement from the Bulgarian Orthodox Church last month explaining its position emphasised that the invitation for the pope’s visit was made by state authorities, suggesting it had been given only a secondary role in the planning.

DIFFICULT DIALOGUE

Bulgaria’s Orthodox community is one of the most hardline in relations with the Catholic Church.

It is the only Orthodox community that has boycotted the most recent meetings of the official Orthodox-Catholic dialogue and also boycotted the 2016 Pan-Orthodox Council, citing differences on preparatory texts.

The Orthodox world considers North Macedonia’s Church to be in a state of schism since it declared itself autocephalous, or independent, from the Serbian Orthodox Church.

Apparently in an effort not to upset other Orthodox Churches, the pope will not be meeting privately with North Macedonian Orthodox Primate Stephen.

It will be only the second visit by a pope to Bulgaria – Pope John Paul visited in 2002.

It is the first by a pope to North Macedonia and comes just three months after its name was changed from Macedonia, ending a decades-old dispute with Greece and opening the way for the ex-Yugoslav republic to join the European Union and NATO.

“It’s a big political gesture on the part of the pope towards countries that have struggled to open themselves up both religiously and politically after the fall of communism and the Socialist bloc,” Grdzelidze told Reuters.

“It could also be an encouragement for the local Catholic churches, despite their size, to be more active in contributing to public life and introducing Western values while not being in contrast to the Orthodox,” said Grdzelidze, a former Georgian ambassador to the Vatican.

Francis is most eagerly awaited in Rakovski, Bulgaria’s largest predominantly Roman Catholic town.

“It is a great joy, a great spiritual experience, a feast of faith for the whole community here in Rakovski as well as for the whole country,” said Sister Elka Staneva, a nun who has been preparing local children to receive their first communion from the pope.

He will spend Tuesday in the North Macedonian capital of Skopje, where the late Mother Teresa was born Anjeze Gonxhe Bojaxhiu to Albanian parents in 1910 when it was still part of the Ottoman Empire.

Known as the “saint of the gutters” for her work among the poor in India, she died in 1997 and was officially made a saint by Pope Francis in 2016. He is due to visit her memorial and meet poor people helped by the order of nuns founded by the Nobel Peace Prize laureate.