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The gun attack that left 11 people dead in the Swedish city of Örebro was “a one-man operation”, police have said, as they worked to identify the victims of the country’s deadliest mass shooting.
The suspected gunman was among the dead and six people were hospitalised after a shooter entered Campus Risbergska, a school specialising in adult education, just after 12.30pm on Tuesday.
The Örebro police chief, Roberto Eid Forest, said at a press conference on Wednesday morning that police had not yet identified all the victims. He said there was strong evidence to suggest that the gunman, who media reports suggested was a 35-year-old former student, shot himself,
“We still believe that it is a one-man operation. We will return to the exact motives,” he said.
Police have revealed very little information so far about the victims or the suspect despite more than 24 hours since the shooting. But they have said there is nothing to suggest the gunman acted on ideological grounds and that the suspect, who has not been named, had no known connection to criminal gangs.
Lars Bröms, the police’s head of operations for identification work, later said he hoped that all the victims would be identified within 48 hours but that they were still trying to reach the relatives of some of the victims.
The Swedish prime minister, Ulf Kristersson; his justice minister, Gunnar Strömmer; and King Carl Gustaf and Queen Silvia visited the site of the school in Örebro on Wednesday afternoon, where they laid flowers, before attending a remembrance service.
“It’s horrible. It’s hard to take in the vastness,” he said, urging people not to speculate. “In time, we will get the answers, and then we can also draw conclusions.”
Eid Forest said the reason it took so long to inform the public about the death toll was the size of the school premises. “It took a very long time to search and ensure that we didn’t have any more injuries,” he said.
Jonas Claesson, the director of health and medical services for the Örebro region, said five of the six people admitted to hospital had initially life-threatening gunshot wounds and were now stable after undergoing surgery. Two of them were being treated in intensive care. A sixth person had minor injuries. Four were women and two, men.
Police urged anybody who was at the school on Tuesday or had footage of the attack to come forward. They asked the public to share only confirmed information.
A meeting was held in central Örebro for relatives, where Eid Forest said they would be informed about “the continued work on, among other things, identification and how it will be done”.
The king and queen sat in a pew at the front of the memorial service at St Nicolai church alongside the prime minister and his wife, Birgitta Ed, and appeared sombre as they led the lighting of candles.
Bishop Johan Dalman described “a city in shock, a country in shock” as he opened the service.
“The queen and I are extremely shocked,” the king, who was visibly upset, told reporters before the service. “I think all of Sweden feels for those who have experienced this traumatic event … Many of us are helping and grieving with them. Everyone stands behind them. This is a terrible experience that Sweden has had to go through.”
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The queen admitted she was “finding it a little bit difficult to talk”, saying: “I have a big wish for the whole of the Swedish people. Where did the beautiful Sweden go? I really want to ask everyone to help build it up again. To strengthen, I don’t want to say the reputation, but the name. What it means to be Swedish.”
Johanna Sollerman, who works in crime strategy in the municipality and is a crisis manager, said it was in the process of setting up centres around the city where victims’ families and members of the community could speak to social workers, members of the Red Cross and representatives of churches and mosques.
“We’re going to live with this as a mark for a very long time. However, what we are starting to see is civil society together with the municipality and police really rallying around for citizens of Örebro,” she said.
She said Campus Risbergska mostly ran education courses for adults, including for those learning Swedish, training in professions such as nursing, and studying to go to university.
Schools in the municipality had been training and practising for how to stop such an incident, she said. “For a few years now we’ve been training on how schools should act to stop a lone actor. We’ve been training in that because we know it can happen.”
The municipality had taken a proactive approach to mapping criminals and gangs, she said, but “this kind of situation is very difficult for us to detect”.
Pia Rizell, a spokesperson for Sweden’s teachers union Sveriges Lärare and a Örebro resident, said everyone was deeply shocked. “This is the deadliest mass shooting we have had in our history and it’s at a school, where you should be safe as a teacher and as a student,” she said.
The shooting is already prompting some headteachers to question security in Swedish schools, which are often on open campuses. Marcus Hedström, the principal of Tunaskolan in Luleå, said he was looking at keeping the school doors permanently locked and installing cameras. “The principal and management have the responsibility to ensure that the school is a safe place. If that means we need to lock the doors, then we will do so,” he told SVT.
Kersti Freed-Klermar, a spokesperson for Swedish Peace and Arbitration Association in Örebro, joined crowds outside St Nicolai church. Although polarisation has been on the rise in Sweden, she said she felt a strong sense of unity there. “It created a feeling that we need to care about each other,” she said. “Light is better than hate.”
