A man armed with a sword has injured several people on Friday afternoon at a school in Fagersta, a Swedish municipality of about 13,000 inhabitants located 170 kilometers from Stockholm. Three teenagers have been taken to the hospital ― two of them with serious injuries ― according to regional emergency services. The Brinell school, which has about 450 students, had just reopened its doors after the summer holidays and, for some students, it was their first day in upper secondary school. The suspect of the attack has been arrested by the police, according to local authorities.
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“We received an alert at 14:06 for an alleged deadly act of violence and sent all available resources to the school,” a police spokesperson told Reuters. The spokesperson indicated that subsequently a person at the scene was detained and that there was no longer any danger to the public.
Citing unidentified sources, the newspaper Expressen reported that the police had shot the suspect of the attack, but this information has not yet been officially confirmed.
The incident comes one year after a shooting at a school in Örebro, also in central Sweden, when an armed man killed 10 people before taking his own life with the weapon. It was the deadliest mass shooting in Sweden’s history.
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The Swedish government is maintaining close contact with the police after the attack, Justice Minister Gunnar Strömmer said in a statement. Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson stated that the police were working intensively on the case and asked everyone to allow officers and emergency services to work without interruptions. “Our thoughts are with all those affected,” he wrote in a post on the social network X.
The leader of the Social Democrats, Magdalena Andersson, whose center-left coalition holds a clear lead in polls ahead of next month’s parliamentary elections, said that “all of Sweden stands united with Fagersta in this difficult moment.”
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