Authorities had initially said that several people were wounded in the violence at Campus Risbergska, a secondary school for young adults in the town of Orebro, but had not reported any fatalities.
“Around 10 people have been killed today,“ Orebro police chief Roberto Eid Forest told reporters, adding that police could “not be more specific about the number due to the large number of wounded”.
“This is the worst mass shooting in Swedish history,“ Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson told a press conference.
Police did not disclose any information about the identity or ages of the dead, nor whether they were students or teachers at the school.
Kristersson noted a lot of “questions were still unanswered.”
- 'Shooting in the hallway' -
The attacker is also believed to have carried some form of equipment to create smoke inside the school, he added.
“Students came and said someone was shooting. Then we heard more shooting in the hallway. We didn’t go out, we hid in our offices,“ they said.
Some witnesses told Swedish media they heard what they believed to be automatic gunfire.
It said the suspect was around 35 years old and had a license to carry a weapon and no criminal record, but did not provide any details about his identity.
- 'Bodies on the ground' -
There was blood everywhere, people were panicking and crying, parents were worried... it was chaos,“ she added, her voice trembling.
European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen described the event as “truly horrifying.”
Students in several nearby schools as well as the one in question had been locked in for several hours “for safety reasons” before gradually being released, police said.
“My son is at this school behind us, they’re locked in too. They have to hide, so I’m waiting for them to evacuate,“ Cia Sandell, 42, said on Tuesday afternoon.
Though such shootings are rare, several other violent incidents have struck Swedish schools in recent years.
Two months earlier, a 16-year-old was arrested after wounding another student and a teacher with a knife at a school in the small town of Kristianstad.
In October 2015, three people were killed in a racially motivated attack at a school in the western town of Trollhattan by a sword-wielding assailant who was later killed by police.
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