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Five held over shootout in wealthy Copenhagen suburb

The Local Denmark
The Local Denmark - [email protected]
Five held over shootout in wealthy Copenhagen suburb
Rungsted is one of Copenhagen's most affluent suburbs. Photo: Google Maps

Five men have been held in Denmark on suspicion of involvement in a gun battle on Saturday in the Copenhagen seaside suburb of Rungsted.

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According to local police, victims were shot, stabbed and run over by cars after a fight broke out between two criminal groups at about 6pm in what is one of the most affluent districts in the whole of Denmark. 
 
"Two of those involved are still being treated in hospital for serious but not life-threatening injuries," Magnus Andresen, chief police inspector for North Zealand, said at a press conference on Sunday, according to Sweden's Dagens Nyheter newspaper. "We are talking about bullet wounds, but also stab wounds, and injuries from being driven over by a car." 
 
According to the Ritzau news agency fourteen were arrested by police on Saturday night, but at a hearing at Hillerød district court on Sunday, police only requested that five remain in detention, with the remaining nine released. 
 
At the press conference Andresen said Danish police believed the shoot-out was triggered by a conflict between two competing criminal gangs based in the nearby districts of Nivå and Kokkedal, with the 20-year-old killed coming from the Nivå group.  
 
"We know the suspects, and we have a presumption that they are part of a criminal network," Andresen said. "It is one of our tasks now to find out exactly what happened." 
 
According to Dagens Nyheter, the press conference was attended by concerned locals, one of whom asked: "Are we really going to need to have it like in Chicago now?" 
 
"This is an expensive area. This must be the first time in history that anything like this has happened round here," Hans Aaage Hjuler, one of the locals, told the paper. "I don't think we actually need to worry that something like this is going to happen again." 
 
Denmark's Minister of Justice Søren Pape Poulsen wrote on Twitter that it was "beyond all understanding that people could have a shoot out on the open streets". 

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