San Francisco Frontiers - Ukrainian kills priest, wounds four at Polish abbey

Police said the 31-year-old went on a stabbing spree at the 17th-century abbey in Jaroslaw, some 30 kilometres (19 miles) from the border with Ukraine.

Poland, a close ally of neighbouring Ukraine, has taken in hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians fleeing Russia's invasion -- with some social tensions erupting in recent months.

Prosecutors said the man entered Poland from Germany and was headed for the Ukraine border, but instead went to the abbey, where he grabbed a knife from the kitchen and attacked clergy and worshippers.

Police said he attacked four men and a woman.

Polish media identified the man who died as a priest. Police confirmed to AFP that one person had died but did not confirm their identity.

Prime Minister Donald Tusk said the "murderer" will be "punished with the full severity of Polish law."

Zelensky meanwhile said: "The perpetrator of this evil must bear full responsibility in accordance with the law" and called the attack a "horrific crime".

"We are shaken by this evil," he said, adding: "Justice must be done.”

The local Gazeta Jaroslawska newspaper published images of fire engines and police outside the monastery, with its entrance cordoned off.

Stabbings -- especially at religious sites -- are extremely rare in Poland, one of Europe's most Catholic countries.

"At around 9:30 am (0730 GMT), the police received a report that a Ukrainian national had attacked men with a knife on the grounds of Jaroslaw Abbey on Benedyktynska Street in Jaroslaw," police in the southeastern Podkarpackie region said in a statement.

- Motive not clear -

All the wounded were taken to hospital, some with serious wounds, it said.

"I came for the holy mass," a woman, told Polish TV station TVN.

"A man aged around 30 struck the priest in the neck artery. The priest fell to the ground," she said.

Another witness told Polish media that the attacker also stabbed a priest in a confessional.

TVN quoted a nun, Barbara Dendor, as saying the clergy could not "get our heads around what has happened today".

"It is a place that I believed was safe," she said.

Prosecutor Bozena Harasz-Woloszyn said authorities had so far no information on the man's motives.

"Today, at night he entered Poland from German territory," she said, quoted by Polish media, adding that he was headed for a nearby border crossing "but did not, however, cross the border."

She said he grabbed a knife from the abbey's kitchen before moving to a church in the abbey.

Doctors will assess the man's state and whether he was under the influence of alcohol, she added.

Poland has said that Russian-orchestrated sabotage is on the rise in the NATO country, during a fifth year of war in Ukraine.

The NATO and EU member state along the alliance's eastern flank has become the main hub for transporting Western military and humanitarian support to Kyiv.

Earlier this month, Tusk warned that intensifying Russian attacks in Ukraine in the coming weeks could affect Poland.

J.Scott--SFF