In the early hours of Friday morning, violence erupted inside a bar in Vienna’s Rudolfsheim-Fünfhaus district, leaving two men in critical condition and a third wounded, reported by “Kurier”. The disturbance began shortly before 1 a.m. in a club on Märzstraße, where an argument between two groups escalated until knives were drawn. According to police spokesman Philipp Haßlinger, both a 33-year-old and a 36-year-old man suffered repeated stab wounds in the melee.
The club’s owner, who had been standing outside, hurried in when he realized what was happening and attempted to break up the fight. In the chaos, he too was attacked and injured, though his wounds were not life-threatening. One victim remained sprawled inside the bar when police arrived, while the other managed to stagger several blocks to Goldschlagstraße, where he collapsed. Both men, Serbian nationals, were treated by emergency responders and rushed to hospitals in grave condition. By midday Friday, their situation had stabilized and doctors reported signs of recovery.
The attackers, believed to be two men, fled the scene and remained at large. Their identities and the motive for the attack were unclear. Investigators from the Vienna State Criminal Office’s western division are now piecing together the chain of events, considering whether the confrontation was a chance outbreak of violence or an arranged meeting that turned deadly.
The bar owner, shaken and injured, could shed little light on the matter. By the time he entered, he said, the clash was already well underway. Detectives are continuing to question witnesses while also collecting forensic evidence, including security footage from cameras in the neighborhood. The club, frequented largely by people with roots in the successor states of former Yugoslavia, was quiet again by morning, though the echoes of the night’s violence lingered on the deserted street outside.
