OREBRO, Sweden (Reuters) -Five people were shot on Tuesday in an attack at a school for adults in Sweden, police said, but they declined to comment on local media reports that several people had been killed, on what the prime minister called a painful day for the country.
The gunman is believed to be among those injured and a search is continuing at the school for more possible victims, a police spokesperson told a press conference. The perpetrator’s motive was not immediately known.
Police said in a statement they had opened an investigation into attempted murder, arson and an aggravated weapons offence and a spokesman told a news conference officers had been met with smoke when they entered the scene of the crime.
“When it comes to saying anything more about the perpetrator, it is still very early. The operation is ongoing and that will undoubtedly become clearer. But we are working very intensively right now,” local police chief Roberto Eid Forest told reporters.
The Aftonbladet daily and broadcasters SVT and TV4, citing anonymous sources, said “several people” had been killed.
“It is a very painful day for the whole of Sweden,” Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson said on X.
“My thoughts are (also) with all of those whose normal school day was turned into fear. Being locked up in a classroom fearing for your life is a nightmare no one should have to experience.”
The shooting took place in Orebro, some 200 km (125 miles) west of Stockholm, at the Risbergska school for adults who did not complete their formal education or failed to get the grades to continue to higher education. It is located on a campus that also houses schools for children.
Maria Pegado, 54, a teacher at the school, said someone threw open the door to her classroom just after lunch break and shouted to everyone to get out.
“I took all my 15 students out into the hallway and we started running,” she told Reuters by phone. “Then I heard two shots but we made it out. We were close to the school entrance.”
“I saw people dragging injured out, first one, then another. I realised it was very serious,” she said.
No police officers were injured in the shooting, police said. Ambulances, rescue services and police were at the scene, a spokesperson for local rescue services said.
A hospital spokesperson told Reuters that out of five patients admitted at the Orebro University Hospital, one had light injuries while four were operated on. Two of the latter were out of surgery and stable while one had serious injuries. The spokesperson said he had no information on the fourth person operated on.
Police said students were held indoors at the school that was targeted and at other schools nearby.
Sweden’s Justice Minister Gunnar Strommer told Reuters the government was in close contact with the police and was following developments closely.
Sweden has been struggling with a wave of shootings and bombings caused by an endemic gang crime problem, though fatal attacks at schools are still rare.
Ten people were killed in seven incidents of deadly violence at schools between 2010 and 2022 according to the Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention.
In one of the highest-profile such crimes in the past decade, a 21-year-old masked assailant driven by racist motives killed a teaching assistant and a boy while wounding two others in 2015.
(Reporting by Anna Ringstrom, Louise Rasmussen, Stine Jacobsen, Johan Ahlander, Simon Johnson, Philip O’Connor; writing by Anna Ringstrom and Niklas PollardEditing by Terje Solsvik, Christina Fincher, Gareth Jones, William Maclean)
