STOCKHOLM, Aug 22 — One person was killed and three wounded after a sword-wielding attacker entered a high school in the central Swedish town of Fagersta on Friday, police said, adding that the suspect had been arrested.
Local police chief Tommy Alriksson told journalists that one person had been found dead after police entered the school, shot and arrested the assailant.
“Our current assessment of injuries is that there are three wounded people and one deceased,” Alriksson told journalists, adding that two had been seriously wounded and a third had lighter injuries.
Alriksson said the arrested suspect was an 18-year-old man, with police working to establish a motive and no reason to believe there were multiple perpetrators.
“It is a very serious and deeply shocking incident,” Fagersta mayor Asa-Marta Sjostrom told reporters alongside Alriksson.
Regional healthcare director Jonas Cederberg told AFP earlier that two “seriously wounded” people had been admitted to hospital.
The two were boys aged between 12 and 17, with one undergoing emergency surgery, although both were in stable condition, the healthcare authority said on its website.
The Fagersta municipality said in a statement early Friday afternoon that “an assailant armed with a sword has entered Brinellskolan and wounded several people”.
Police said they received reports of the attack shortly after 2pm (1200 GMT).
Students who had just returned from their summer holidays were placed under lockdown at the school and several nearby schools for more than three hours before being released.
Swedish broadcaster SVT reported that the suspect had a previous assault conviction, wore a helmet and carried a sword, recalling a 2015 school attack in Trollhattan in which a sword-wielding 21-year-old killed three people in a racially motivated attack.
Images broadcast by SVT showed several ambulances and police vehicles outside the school, along with a police helicopter.
The school has about 450 students in a town of around 12,000 people.
Nellie Strandberg, a 16-year-old student, said she was heading to the school library when the attacker entered.
“We were just going to collect some things and get ready for Monday. Then I see I guy who’s bloody all down his back,” she told newspaper Dagens Nyheter.
“We asked what happened. My teachers didn’t answer, they didn’t want to say anything. Then my friend said somebody had a big knife,” she added.
In May, the municipality said students at Brinellskolan had been sent home following a threat against the school.
Police were also investigating a TikTok account reportedly belonging to the suspect that had been taken down, with AFP viewing several videos referencing school attacks before its removal.
Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson said in a written statement that “a serious incident has taken place today at a school in Fagersta, just after the summer holidays”.
“We do not yet know what lies behind the attack, but we do know that the police are working extremely intensively,” Kristersson said.
Sweden has suffered several other high-profile attacks at educational institutions, including a February 2025 shooting at an adult education centre in Orebro that killed 10 people, the country’s worst mass shooting.
In March 2022, an 18-year-old student stabbed two teachers to death at a secondary school in the southern city of Malmo. — AFP
