Jewish schools and institutions in Vienna will be closed on Tuesday after a gunman killed four people in an attack that began near the city’s main synagogue on Monday night.

The assailant,who was was shot dead by police, is thought to have been acting alone.  

Oskar Deutsch, head of the city’s Jewish community, said, “As of now, we can’t confirm that the synagogue was the target.”

The Seitenstettengasse Synagogue was closed at the time of the shooting which spread to other locations in the centre of the capital.

From a window, the community’s rabbi, Shlomo Hofmeister, observed a gunman firing “a hundred rounds” into people sitting outside bars and restaurants.

It was their last opportunity to socialise before the city went into lockdown today to counter a surge in coronavirus cases.

Austria’s Interior Minister Karl Niehammer described the dead gunman as an “Islamic terrorist”.

Its Chancellor Sebastian Kurz pleged “decisive action against the perpetrators of this hideous terrorist attack”.

Seven victims were reported to have received the “life-threatening” wounds.

During the course of Tuesday, police arrested 14 people thought to be linked to the gunman.

The Vienna shooting comes after a number of incidents in France which followed the murder of a schoolteacher who showed cartoons of the prophet Mohammed in a lesson on free speech.

The synagogue suffered a lethal attack in 1981 from Palestinian terrorists which killed two people.