Copenhagen incident: One killed in Denmark mosque shooting

Scuffle between younger men took place outside a Pakistani mosque.

COPENHAGEN: A man was killed and two others were injured after a shooting outside a Pakistani mosque in Copenhagen following prayers to mark the end of the month of Ramazan on Tuesday, police said, Associated Press reported.

Police spokesman Lau Thygesen said the shooting took place outside the Muslim Culture Institute, founded in the late 1970s by Pakistani immigrants, located in the Danish capital’s western Vesterbro district, and that the roads surrounding the mosque and a nearby car park have been cordoned off.

“After the prayer, there apparently was some kind of quarrel between two groups. I don’t know if both (groups) had been inside the mosque,” Thygesen said. “The quarrel turned into a scuffle which was followed by the shooting.”

Two other people were injured in the melee, one of whom fled in a car and was later found in a hospital in the Swedish city of Malmo, that is located across a waterway from Copenhagen, Thygesen said.

No arrests have been made but police were on the lookout for “several perpetrators,” he said.

A spokesperson for the Muslim institute, who declined to give his name before hanging up the telephone, told the Associated Press that the incident took place on a parking lot next to the mosque as hundreds of people were leaving the 9 am prayer service.

Kuran Qureshi, who attended the prayers, told Danish broadcaster TV2 in a live interview that he had witnessed two groups of “younger men having some kind of argument” on the parking lot just before the shooting started.

Qureshi said he had heard “15, maybe 20 shots,” as he drove away from the area with his 10-year-old son. “I saw people, women, and children ducking and hiding behind cars. It was really unpleasant.”

The Muslim Cultural Institute includes a mosque as well as facilities where boys and girls are taught about Islam in Danish.

Published in The Express Tribune, August 31^st,  2011.