Swedish police said Thursday the victims of the country's worst mass shooting were of multiple nationalities, as Syria and Bosnia said their citizens were among the dead. Regional police chief Lars Wiren said officers arriving at the scene, where the gunman had killed 10 people before apparently killing himself, had described a scene resembling "an inferno". Wiren said officers sent to the adult education centre in Orebro, west of Stockholm, were faced with "dead people, injured people, screams and smoke".
Releasing a timeline of the attack, police described how the first officers arrived at Campus Risbergska five minutes after police received several reports about a shooting at pm GMT. Shortly afterwards, officers reported smoke spreading through the building. They saw what they perceived to be "the shooter armed with a rifle-like weapon", said the police statement. Within around 10 minutes of the first alert, a specialist first-response team had arrived and entered the building.
Wiren told reporters that officers got the impression that "the shooting started being directed at police when they entered the school instead of students and staff". After a "time-consuming search" of the partially smoke-filled premised which lasted about an hour, they found the suspected shooter "dead with several weapons next to him". Officers also found 10 empty magazines at the site and "a large amount of unused ammunition" next to the suspected gunman, who had turned the gun on himself and was dead when police reached him.
Anna Bergqvist, who is heading the investigation, said they were still working to pin down a motive for Tuesday's massacre, which has sent shockwaves across the Nordic country. Broadcaster TV4 published a video filmed by a student hiding in a bathroom in which shots can be heard outside and a person can be heard shouting: "You will leave Europe! Bergqvist told AFP there were "multiple nationalities, different genders and different ages" among those killed.
The Syrian embassy, expressed its "condolences and sympathies to the families of the victims, among them Syrians", in a Facebook post late Wednesday. It told AFP it was waiting for police to confirm the total number but said they had "contacted the families of two Syrian victims". Bosnia's foreign ministry said Thursday a Bosnian woman had been killed, citing family members of the victim who had contacted their embassy. Swedish press have identified the suspect as year-old Rickard Andersson, but there has been no official confirmation of his identity.
