A shooting at an adult education campus in central Sweden on Tuesday left at least 10 people dead and injured an undisclosed number of others, in what the prime minister called the worst mass shooting in the country’s history.
The suspect was among the dead, the country’s justice minister, Gunnar Strommer, said. But the authorities released few other details, including the person’s identity and a possible motive.
“We do not think there is any terror motive behind this, but it is too early in the investigation to say,” Roberto Eid Forest, the head of the local police, said on Tuesday evening. “We think we have the perpetrator,” he added, “but we are not ruling out anything.”
The shooting occurred in Orebro, a city about 120 miles west of the capital, Stockholm. It came as Sweden, more commonly associated with high living standards, women’s rights and relatively welcoming asylum policies, has been grappling with a steadily swelling epidemic of gun violence and one of the highest per capita rates of gun violence in the European Union, police statistics show.
The gunfire erupted about 12:30 p.m. local time at the Risbergska educational center, which caters to about 2,000 students and offers classes for adults studying for a high school diploma, along with Swedish-language classes and vocational classes, its website says, in a city that has a large population of immigrants and asylum seekers.
Cellphone footage broadcast on local TV stations showed students cowering under desks and chairs, and others running from the building to emergency service vehicles. The authorities said late Tuesday that the number of people injured was still unclear.
“I was eating with colleagues when, all of a sudden, a lot of students came running, saying we have to leave,” the center’s principal, Ingela Back Gustafsson, told Sweden’s public broadcaster, SVT. “When we were out in the schoolyard, I heard a lot of shots nearby. We yelled, ‘Run, run.’ And we ran for our lives.”
The authorities launched a “major operation,” with police cars swarming the campus, throngs of armed specials forces officers spilling out of vehicles and officials locking down the campus, several schools in the area and even a restaurant as they searched for the shooter.
Police officers investigated several addresses in the city, the authorities said. In a statement, they did not rule out the possibility that the shooter might have worked with others. After several hours, the police evacuated the center’s classrooms, allowing dozens of students and children to leave.
Mr. Forest said that the shooter most likely had acted alone, was not affiliated with a gang and had not been known to the police.
The shooting sent shock waves across the Scandinavian country.
“We have seen a brutal act of violence,” Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson said in a televised address. “This is the worst mass shooting in Swedish history.”
Mr. Kristersson also said in a statement on social media: “It is a very painful day for all of Sweden. Being locked in a classroom, fearing for your life, is a nightmare that no one should have to experience.”
Shootings are rare in Swedish schools, but the country has seen an increase in violent crime in recent years. Its homicide rate has risen to among the highest in the European Union, the Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention said this year.
While Sweden has strict gun laws, with licenses usually limited to hunting rifles, criminologists have linked a rise in shootings to the illegal drug trade and stockpiles of firearms smuggled in from postwar Balkan countries, Eastern Europe and Turkey. Gangs are also known to groom and recruit children as young as 11 as contract killers, the police say.
The record for the highest number of shootings was set in 2022, with 391 episodes, police figures show.
In 2022, an 18-year-old student wielding an ax, a knife and a hammer killed two teachers in the southern city of Malmo. In 2015, Sweden was stunned when a 21-year-old man, armed with a sword, killed a teacher and a student at a school in the southwestern part of the country.
The mass shooting on Tuesday left Swedes reeling.
“We haven’t had these kinds of shootings in Sweden before,” Anders Svahn, a teacher at another school in Orebro, said by phone on Tuesday. “One is very touched and affected by this. I know people who work there.”
Last year, teachers and students at Mr. Svahn’s high school, which also offers adult education, practiced a shelter-in-place drill for the first time, he said.
“It’s a risk that has increased, but it’s not something you think about every day,” he added.
Classes at the Risbergska center are unlikely to take place on Wednesday, and it was not clear if other schools in the area would reopen.
Nooshi Dadgostar, the leader of the opposition Left Party, said on social media: “Shocked by the terrible news from Orebro. The violence our country is going through is an abyss we must find our way out of together.”
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