A gunman who shot dead 10 people at an adult education centre had access to several weapons and had “major problems” at school, Swedish media have reported.
In an update on Wednesday, police said the perpetrator appears to have shot himself – and added they are still unclear on the motive.
Swedish media have named the attacker as Rickard Andersson, 35, who was said to have been unemployed for more than 10 years and attended a special class for people with Asperger’s and high-functioning autism, Swedish channel TV4 reports.
Image: Swedish media have named the attacker as Rickard Andersson
A hunting weapon for which he had a licence was found next to his body at the scene of the attack on Tuesday.
The head of the local police, Roberto Eid Forest, said the centre’s large premises meant it took a long time for officers to search the campus and ensure there were not any more victims.
Police heard gunshots when they arrived and initially thought they were being fired at, he added.
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The shooting started about midday local time at Campus Risbergska in the town of Orebro, about 200km (125 miles) west of the capital Stockholm.
The attack happened after many students had gone home following a national exam.
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1:08
Student describes chaos of Sweden school shooting
Students took shelter in nearby buildings and other parts of the campus were evacuated.
Officials said three women and two men, all with gunshot wounds, underwent surgery at hospital. All were in a serious but stable condition after being admitted with life-threatening injuries. Another woman was treated for minor injuries and was stable.
Two of the victims were in intensive care, a health official said, and all the victims were over the age of 18.
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2:21
Sky’s Ashna Hurynag reports from Orebro, Sweden in the wake of a mass shooting.
Police previously said the number killed could rise.
They said there were no warnings beforehand and they believe the perpetrator acted alone. The force has not said if the man was a student at the centre.
Image: Police at the scene of the shooting on Tuesday. Pic: AP/Kicki Nilsson/TT News Agency
The authorities said there were no suspected connections to terrorism at this point, but they have not suggested a possible motive for the attack.
Officers raided the suspect’s home after the shooting on Tuesday but they did not say what they found.
Andersson was reported to have not had any income from any job since 2015, while his performance at school was also reviewed as “problematic”, TV4 said, as he failed all subjects from the spring semester of grade eight and throughout grade nine.
Image: Rickard Andersson
Image: Rickard Andersson attended a special class for people with Asperger’s and high-functioning autism, Sweden’s TV4 said
Andersson went on to study an individual programme before attending a special class for people with Asperger’s and high-functioning autism at Wadkoping Education Centre in Orebro.
He passed in aesthetic activities and history but failed in all other subjects.
‘Blood everywhere on the floor’
Andreas Sundling, 28, was among those forced to barricade themselves inside.
“We heard loud bangs and first we thought people were fighting outside and maybe throwing chairs and tables, [but] then we heard people screaming,” he told Sky News.
Image: A police helicopter above the scene on Tuesday. Pic: AP
“Then the people in my class realised that something is wrong. We closed all the doors to the classroom and we locked the doors and I barricaded the doors with tables and chairs.”
Mr Sundling said his class hid under the tables and he began thinking about his family, including his two-year-old daughter and six siblings.
The student said there was “blood everywhere on the floor” inside the centre and it was “crazy”.
Image: A man lights a candle near the scene of the shooting
The centre is for students over the age of 20, according to its website. It offers primary and upper secondary school courses, as well as Swedish classes for immigrants, vocational training and programmes for people with intellectual disabilities.
Sweden’s prime minister Ulf Kristersson said the tragedy is the worst mass shooting in the country’s history.
“Today, we have witnessed brutal, deadly violence against completely innocent people,” Mr Kristersson told reporters.
“This is the worst mass shooting in Swedish history. Many questions remain unanswered, and I cannot provide those answers either.
“But the time will come when we will know what happened, how it could occur, and what motives may have been behind it. Let us not speculate,” he said.
The country’s king Carl XVI Gustaf said the shooting was a “terrible atrocity”.
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The King and Queen of Sweden have visited the site of the worst mass shooting in the country’s history.
“We send our condolences tonight to the families and friends of the deceased. Our thoughts at this time also go to the injured and their relatives, as well as to others affected,” he said.
“My family and I would like to express our great appreciation for the police, rescue and medical personnel who worked intensively to save and protect human lives on this dark day.”
Fatal attacks at educational establishments in Sweden are very rare, with 10 killed in seven incidents between 2010 and 2022, according to the Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention.
Four more arrests have been made by French police investigating the Louvre museum heist.
Two men and two women from the Parisregion were detained on Tuesday, prosecutor Laure Beccuau said.
Ms Beccuau’s statement did not say what role the quartet are suspected of having played in the robbery. The two men are aged 38 and 39, and the two women are aged 31 and 40.
They are being interrogated by police, who can hold them for questioning for 96 hours.
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2:36
Louvre: How ‘heist of the century’ unfolded
The latest arrests come after investigating magistrates filed preliminary charges against three men and one woman who were arrested last month.
The haul – which included a diamond and emerald necklace Napoleon gave to Empress Marie-Louise, jewels linked to 19th-century Queens Marie-Amelie and Hortense, and Empress Eugenie’s pearl and diamond tiara – has not been recovered.
The heist was pulled off in mere minutes last month – and took place while the Louvre was open to visitors, raising doubts over the credibility of the world’s most-visited museum as a guardian for its priceless works.
On Sunday 19 October, two men used a stolen furniture lift to access the second floor Galerie d’Apollon.
They then cracked open display cases with angle grinders before escaping with their loot and fleeing on the back of two scooters driven by accomplices.
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0:35
Moment thieves escape Louvre in jewel heist
The Paris prosecutor previously said the robbery appeared to be the work of small-time criminals rather than professional gangsters.
Speaking shortly after the heist, art detective Arthur Brand told Sky News that detectives faced a “race against time” to recover the stolen treasure.
“These crown jewels are so famous, you just cannot sell them,” Mr Brand said. “The only thing they can do is melt the silver and gold down, dismantle the diamonds, try to cut them. That’s the way they will probably disappear forever.
“They [the police] have a week. If they catch the thieves, the stuff might still be there. If it takes longer, the loot is probably gone and dismantled. It’s a race against time.”
Washington woke up this morning to a flurry of developments on Ukraine.
It was the middle of the night in DC when a tweet dropped from Ukraine’s national security advisor, Rustem Umerov.
He said that the US and Ukraine had reached a “common understanding on the core terms of the agreement discussed in Geneva.”
He added that Volodymyr Zelenskyy would travel to America “at the earliest suitable date in November to complete final steps and make a deal with President Trump”.
By sunrise in Washington, a US official was using similar but not identical language to frame progress.
The official, speaking anonymously to US media, said that Ukraine had “agreed” to Trump’s peace proposal “with some minor details to be worked out”.
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In parallel, it’s emerged that talks have been taking place in Abu Dhabi. The Americans claim to have met both Russian and Ukrainian officials there, though the Russians have not confirmed attendance.
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8:13
Peace deal ‘agreement’: What we know
“I have nothing to say. We are following the media reports,” Dmitry Peskov, Vladimir Putin’s spokesperson, told Russian state media.
Trump is due to travel to his Florida resort Mar-a-Lago tonight, where he will remain until Sunday.
We know the plan has been changed from its original form, but it’s clear that Zelenskyy wants to be seen to agree to something quickly – that would go down well with President Trump.
The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), a controversial US and Israeli-backed aid distribution group, has said it will permanently cease operations.
Set up as an alternative to United Nations aid programmes in May, GHF’s executive director John Acree said on Monday that it “succeeded in our mission of showing there’s a better way to deliver aid to Gazans”.
The foundation had already closed down aid distribution sites after US President Donald Trump’s ceasefire plan was agreed by Hamasand Israelin October.
The GHF which began operations in Gazaafter an Israeli blockade of food deliveries, lasting nearly three months, was criticised by Palestinians, aid workers and health officials who said it forced people to risk their lives to reach the sites.
Image: File pic: Reuters
According to witnesses and videos posted to social media, Israeli soldiers repeatedly opened fire at the sites, killing hundreds. The IDF denied this, saying it only fired warning shots as a crowd-control measure or if its troops were in danger.
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2:54
Gaza deaths increase when aid sites open
MSF – also known as Doctors Without Borders – said in a report in August that the GHF sites “morphed into a laboratory of cruelty,” and described scenes there as “orchestrated killing”.
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‘We are proud,’ says GHF director
Mr Acree said in a statement through the GHF’s website that “from the outset, GHF’s goal was to meet an urgent need” and to hand over a successful aid operation to “the broader international community”.
The GHF would hand over its work to the US-led Civil-Military Coordination Center in Israel overseeing the Gaza ceasefire.
“We are winding down our operations as we have succeeded in our mission of showing there’s a better way to deliver aid to Gazans,” Mr Acree said.
Image: File pic: Reuters
The GHF director added: “At a critical juncture, we are proud to have been the only aid operation that reliably and safely provided free meals directly to Palestinian people in Gaza, at scale and without diversion.
“From our very first day of operations, our mission was singular: feed civilians in desperate need. We built a new model that worked, saved lives, and restored dignity to civilians in Gaza.”
According to the GHF website, the group distributed more than three million food boxes, totalling 187 million meals, and supplied 1.1 million packs of Ready-to-Use Supplementary Food (RUSF) for malnourished children.
In a statement, Hamas welcomed the closure of GHF and accused it of being a project that “engineered starvation” in partnership with Israel.
A Hamas spokesperson said: “Since its entry into the Gaza Strip, this foundation was part of the occupation’s security system, which adopted distribution mechanisms entirely disconnected from humanitarian principles, and created dangerous and degrading conditions for the dignity of the starving Palestinian people during their attempts to obtain a piece of bread, resulting in the killing and injury of thousands, through sniper operations and deliberate killing.”
They also called on international legal bodies to hold “this foundation and its officers accountable for their crimes against our people”.
US state department deputy spokesperson Tommy Piggot also said on X that the aid group “shared valuable lessons learned with us and our partners”.
“GHF’s model, in which Hamas could no longer loot and profit from stealing aid, played a huge role in getting Hamas to the table and achieving a ceasefire,” he added.