One of the victims of the attack on an adult education centre in Sweden rang his fiancee one last time after being shot to tell her he loved her.

Salim Iskef, 29, is thought to be one of the 10 people killed in Orebro on Tuesday.

Local media has named Rickard Andersson as the perpetrator behind the attack, which the Swedish prime minister described as the worst mass shooting in the country’s history.

After being shot, Mr Iskef, a newly engaged nursing assistant, managed to call his fiancee one final time.

“He said he loved me so much”, Kareen Elia, his fiancee, told Sky News’ Swedish partner TV4.

“You have no words. I can’t describe the feelings. We were supposed to get married on July 25,” she said.

She added that, after he called her lying on the floor, she could not understand what she was seeing on FaceTime and was in shock.

Then he said: “Take care of my mother, yourself,” Ms Elia told the Swedish outlet. She added: “He said he had been shot. That they had shot us. I asked where. He hung up. I called again and again but he didn’t answer.”

Ms Elia was critical of the police’s handling of the situation, saying officers could have saved him if they had acted faster.

She also said she was still waiting for confirmation of her fiancee’s death. “We haven’t seen him yet,” she added.

‘We heard him walking around’

It comes as one of the survivors told Sky News correspondent Ashna Hurynag how, as she hid fearing for her life, she heard the footsteps of Andersson close by.

Meracil Kallkvist said: “I was really shaking. It was scary. I was thinking, I was going to panic.

“I wanted to run to save my life because I was thinking I don’t want to get… [hurt] here sitting down and hiding.”

She recounted how she panicked as the first shots rang out, fearing something might have exploded, while some of the other students went to investigate the noises.

Ms Kallkvist said: “They wanted to know, then after like two seconds because [of the] other shots, one person ran back, someone was shooting, so I ran.”

While looking for somewhere to hide, she described how she met her teacher and, unable to lock the door of the room they were in, they pushed tables and chairs against it to try to block it.

It was then they heard Andersson walking around.

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Ms Kallkvist added: “After, we heard him walking around. Yes… it was really scary, if he’d just turned to the room where we were hiding…

“He [was] just walking around and talking and after we heard banging on the doors, I think it was the other room, then suddenly shots again.”

Police previously said they were yet to establish a motive and that the gunman was believed to have shot himself dead.

A British woman has died on holiday in Sri Lanka after a room in her hostel was fumigated for bed bugs, local police said.

Ebony McIntosh, 24, from Derby, was taken to hospital in the capital Colombo on Saturday after becoming ill.

She had reportedly suffered vomiting, nausea and breathing difficulties – but died there hours later.

Another woman Nadie Raguse, 26, from Germany, who was also staying at the Miracle Colombo City Hostel died, Sri Lanka police said.

The force’s spokesperson Buddhika Manatunga said a room in the hostel had been fumigated for bed bugs before the women fell ill – and that they are investigating the possibility of poisoning by noxious pesticides.

The hostel is closed until further notice.

The digital marketing and social media manager’s family has set up a GoFundMe page to help with the cost of returning her body to the UK.

‘Absolutely heartbroken’

A statement on the page read: “We are absolutely heartbroken to share that our beautiful baby girl and big sister Ebony has passed away unexpectedly on Saturday 1st February 2025, thousands of miles away from home.

“Words cannot begin to express how broken we are, it’s been like a nightmare since we found out on Sunday morning, we have prayed and prayed that this can’t be true. It couldn’t possibly happen to our lovely Ebs.”

The statement added: “We cannot even begin to imagine how scared she must have felt at the time and it hurts us so badly to think of the pain she was in. We need to be with her and bring her home safely.

“She passed away with someone from the hostel beside her. We are endlessly grateful to this man for staying with her during her last moments.”

The family said Ms McIntosh had started her holiday on 28 January when she flew from Heathrow to “follow her dreams of travelling all over South Asia, starting in Sri Lanka”.

They said she was “full of excitement for her adventures ahead, in typical Ebony style she had spent months researching and planning and drawing up schedules for the coming months”.

“Her trip was cruelly cut short on Saturday 1st February, when she [was taken] very ill in the hostel she was staying in.”

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A cause of death has not been established – and a post-mortem examination cannot take place until the family arrives on 10 February, the police said.

A Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO) spokesperson confirmed: “We are supporting the family of a British woman who died in Sri Lanka, and are in contact with the local authorities.”

Last month was the warmest January on record, according to new data.

The finding has baffled scientists, who had expected changes in ocean currents in the Pacific to take the edge off rising global temperatures.

Figures released by the European Copernicus climate service show average temperatures around the world in January were 1.75C warmer than before greenhouse gas emissions started to rise significantly in the industrial revolution around 150 years ago.

That’s 0.1C above the record set last January. And it comes after a year in which temperatures topped 1.5C, the target for climate negotiations, for the first time.

Dr Friederike Otto, a climate scientist at Imperial College London, warned that the rising pace of climate change would increase the risk of extreme weather and its consequences.

“This January is the hottest on record because countries are still burning huge amounts of oil, gas and coal,” she said.

“The Los Angeles wildfires were a stark reminder that we have already reached an incredibly dangerous level of warming. We’ll see many more unprecedented extreme weather events in 2025.”

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January had been expected to be slightly cooler than last year because of a natural shift in weather patterns and ocean currents in the Pacific, called La Nina.

But that hasn’t been enough to slow the upward trend in temperatures.

‘Frankly terrifying’

Bill McGuire, emeritus professor of geophysical & climate hazards at UCL, said: “The fact that the latest robust Copernicus data reveals the January just gone was the hottest on record – despite an emerging La Nina, which typically has a cooling effect – is both astonishing and, frankly terrifying.

“Having crashed through the 1.5C limit in 2024, the climate is showing no signs of wanting to dip under it again, reflected by the fact that this is the 18th of the last 19 months to see the global temperature rise since pre-industrial times top 1.5C.

“On the basis of the Valencia floods and apocalyptic LA wildfires, I don’t think there can be any doubt that dangerous, all-pervasive, climate breakdown has arrived.”

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The consequences of a warming atmosphere are also being directly felt in the UK, with more intense rainfall increasing the risk of surface flooding.

The Environment Agency released figures in December showing 4.6 million properties in England are at risk from flooding as drainage systems are overwhelmed by rainfall. That’s a 43% increase on previous estimates.

But adapting to a climate change is hugely expensive.

The government on Wednesday announced it would spend £2.65bn over two years to shore up existing flood defences and protect an extra 52,000 homes and businesses – a tiny fraction of the number at risk.