A gunman opened fire at an adult education center in the Swedish city of Örebro on Tuesday, killing at least 10 people in what the country’s prime minister called the “worst mass shooting in Swedish history.”
Swedish police are still piecing together how the tragedy occurred. Here’s what we know so far.
At 12:33 p.m. local time (6:33 a.m. ET) on February 4, police received reports of a shooting in Örebro, a city about 160 kilometers (100 miles) west of the capital, Stockholm.
The shooting occurred at Campus Risbergska, a school for adults who have not completed earlier stages of education. Such facilities are known as a Komvux in Sweden. Komvuxes provide vocational training, Swedish language classes and other courses for adults seeking the qualifications needed to gain employment. They are also essential services for Sweden’s refugee and migrant populations.
Cellphone videos showed students taking shelter under desks while alarms screeched and red lights flashed.
“We heard bangs and loud screams. At first we didn’t understand what it was, but then we realized it could be gunfire,” Andreas Sundling, a 28-year-old student at the campus, told CNN affiliate Expressen.
He said his classmates barricaded the doors and took cover for around an hour, before police entered the classroom and evacuated the students. “There was blood all over the corridor,” Sundling said.
Some 130 police officers responded to the incident, regional police chief Lars Wirén said during a Thursday news conference. While responding to the attack, officers were shot at with a rifle-style weapon, he said.
“At 12:33 p.m. several calls were received regarding an ongoing shooting at the Risbergska school,” Wirén said. “A very large number of police were sent to the scene, and were at the scene within a few minutes,” he said.
Wirén added that the responding officers described an “inferno,” with “dead people, injured people, screams and smoke.”
At least 10 people were killed and six were injured in the attack, police said. The attacker also died.
In an update Wednesday, Örebro regional authorities said six people were being treated at the local university hospital.
Three women and two men, all adults, were admitted for gunshot wounds and underwent surgery. Initially thought to have life-threatening injuries, the authorities said the five are now in a “stable but serious” condition.
Another woman also received treatment for more minor injuries. No one else was admitted to the hospital overnight, authorities said.
By the time the attack began, many students had left the campus after taking a national exam on Tuesday, Lena Warenmark, a teacher, told Swedish public broadcaster SVT.
Mary Pegado, a 54-year-old teacher at the school, said she and her students had run to safety after someone burst into her classroom and told them to get out.
“I think of my students,” Pegado told Reuters. “Many of them have fled from countries where things like this happen, and now they experience it here. It is horrible,” she said.
Police have so far given little detail about the victims, although Preliminary Investigation Manager Anna Bergqvist told Thursday’s news conference that the 10 killed have “different nationalities, different ages and different sex.”
A Syrian refugee was among those who were fatally shot, according to Reuters. The 29-year-old was one of several members of Sweden’s Christian Syrian community who were caught in the attack, the news agency reported.
Grief and shock were heavy in the air as a steady stream of mourners came to pay their respects at a candlelight vigil Wednesday night by the side of a busy road, next to a small housing estate and opposite the school where Tuesday’s events unfolded.
A dozen firefighters were among the crowd, standing in silence, their heads bowed.
“They came here to learn, not to die,” said Jenny Samuelsson, whose sister-in-law was killed in the shooting.
She said she only learned the news of her family’s loss this afternoon, 24 hours after her sister-in-law, Camille, was killed.
Camille had been studying to become a nurse, according to Jenny. “They were here to help others, to learn. I have no words,” she said, choking on her emotion, “I can’t explain the hole I have in my heart. And why? There is no answer, so what question can I even ask?”
Hundreds of candles flickered in the cold night air. The young and the old arrived clutching white candles, ready to light them, along with flowers, and handwritten notes paying tribute to those killed in Tuesday’s massacre.
“You are in our hearts, rest in peace,” said one, written in Swedish. On another note, in English, read John Donne’s poem ‘No Man Is An Island.’
Two 17-year-old boys, previously friends from primary school, stood arm in arm after bumping into each other at the vigil. They spoke of their shock over what happened, how they were forced to lock down in their high schools as the events played out. They came to show their support, they said.
The emotion was palpable. School shootings are rare in Sweden and there is real shock that the peace of this small Swedish city has been so violently shattered.
Excluding Risbergska, schools in the area have reopened and resumed lessons, municipal director Peter Larsson told journalists Thursday. According to Larsson, local schools had been carrying out drills to prepare for such attacks, which meant that the teachers at Risbergska knew roughly what to do during the shooting.
Not much, yet. Police said that the attacker was not known to them, that he was not connected to any gangs and that he was not believed to be acting based on ideological motives.
The attacker’s identity has not yet been confirmed by authorities, who say that they were waiting for DNA confirmation.
“We believe we know who the perpetrator is, what his identity is, but we will not confirm this information until we’re completely sure that we have received the DNA match that we have sent to the forensic medicine agency,” Bergqvist told Thursday’s news conference.
“We will all need to be patient on this issue, we will not confirm this information until then. And this will take some time,” she said.
There also remains no clear motive for the attack, according to authorities.
Authorities believe the suspect was a lone actor, and he may have once been a student at the school he targeted, investigators Bergqvist and Kristoffer Zickbauer told Thursday’s news conference.
Police said that the attacker also shot at officers after they arrived at the campus. In a press conference Wednesday, police said that when they found the attacker, he was already dead and that it appears that he shot himself. The attacker has not yet been identified by authorities.
Three weapons were found next to the suspect’s body, police said Thursday.
The suspect had a license for a total of four weapons. Aside from the weapons found with his body, the fourth has also been recovered and taken into custody.
Large amounts of unused ammunition were also found alongside the body.
School shootings are rare, but Sweden – long associated with high living standards and a strong social safety net – has seen a surge in violent crime in recent years, driven in part by gang warfare.
In 2023, Sweden had the highest rate of deadly gun violence per capita in the European Union, according to Reuters. In 2024, at least 40 people were shot dead in the country of only 10 million people – down from a peak of 63 people shot dead in 2022.
Although Sweden has high rates of gun ownership by EU standards, Swedes have to obtain a license before being allowed to own a weapon and the country places tight restrictions on eligibility.
Prime Minister Kristersson called for an investigation into how Tuesday’s “horrific” crime could have occurred.
“We’ve today seen brutal, deadly violence against completely innocent people – this is the worst mass shooting in Swedish history,” he said.
King Carl Gustaf and Queen Silvia joined Kristersson and other top officials to lay flowers at a makeshift vigil outside the school on Wednesday.
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Publish date : 2025-02-05 04:20:00
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