A gunman killed at least 10 people in an attack on an adult school in Sweden on Tuesday, police said, in what Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson called a “very painful day” for the country.
Police said the gunman was also among the dead. The Risbergska school is located in Orebro, about 200 kilometers from the capital, Stockholm. It caters to adults who have not completed their formal education or have not achieved the grades to enter higher education. There are also schools for children on the same campus.
Orebro police chief Roberto Eid Forest told reporters that police “could not be more specific” about the number of victims and that the alleged assailant was not known to the authorities.
Forest said police received the first reports of a shooting at the school at 12:33 p.m. local time but could not specify how it occurred or whether the incident was inside or outside the school. Police said they believe the gunman acted alone.
Teachers Miriam Jarlevall and Patrik Soderman told the Dagens Nyheter newspaper that they heard shots in a corridor. “There were many shots at the beginning, then it was quiet for half an hour and then it started again. We were lying under our desks, huddled,” they said.
Students at the institution and from several nearby schools were locked down for several hours before being gradually released, police said.
Swedish television channel TV4 reported that police raided the suspect’s home in Orebro late Tuesday afternoon. According to the broadcaster, the gunman was about 35 years old, had a license to carry a weapon, and had no criminal record. Police did not confirm this information.
The suspect’s identity has not yet been revealed.
Several media outlets reported that the assailant had turned his weapon on himself. According to police, no officers were injured in the incident. Ambulances, rescue services, and police were still at the scene. Sweden’s Justice Minister Gunnar Strommer said the government was in close contact with the police and was following events closely.
Sweden has been grappling with a wave of shootings and bombings stemming from the country’s endemic gang crime problem, though fatal attacks at schools remain rare.
Between 2010 and 2022, 10 people were killed in seven incidents of fatal violence at schools, according to the Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention.
In one of the most high-profile crimes in the last decade, a masked 21-year-old assailant, who acted for racist motives, killed a teaching assistant and a young man and injured two others in 2015.