by Nioucha ZAKAVATI
A gunman shot and wounded four people at an education center in central Sweden on Tuesday, police said, urging the public to stay away from the area as officers hunted for possible accomplices.
Images from the scene showed a large police presence with multiple ambulances and emergency vehicles outside the Campus Risbergska, a school for young adults in the town of Orebro.
Several media reported the suspected assailant had turned his gun on himself. Police would not confirm that but said five people were hurt overall, including one who was thought to be the gunman.
"One of the injured persons is a person whom we suspect may be the assailant," Orebro police chief Roberto Eid Forest told a press conference as the massive police operation continued more than three hours after the attack.
"We can't rule out other suspects, and that's something we are continuing to work on in this intensive phase now -- why it happened and if there are other possible suspects."
He said police were not aware of a motive yet.
School attacks are relatively rare in Sweden, but the country has suffered shootings and bombings linked to gang violence that kill dozens of people each year.
Forest said police received the first reports of a school shooting at 12:33 pm (1133 GMT), but could not specify how it unfolded nor whether it occurred inside or outside the school.
A Campus Risbergska teacher said he was in the school when he heard gunfire.
"I heard shots fired, so I've barricaded myself and am waiting for news. We have an alarm on our security app and I'm communicating with my colleagues," Petter Kraftling was quoted as saying by the online newspaper Vi Larare just after the shooting.
Swedish tabloid Aftonbladet reported that police were conducting an operation at the suspect's home in Orebro late on Tuesday afternoon.
The paper said the suspect was around 35 years old, but did not provide any details about his identity.
An official at Orebro's healthcare authority, Jonas Claesson, said five people had been admitted to Orebro University Hospital after the shooting.
Two of the wounded "have been operated on and are in stable condition. Their injuries are not life-threatening," he said, adding that another "has not had surgery and is in serious condition."
He provided no information on the others.
Police said they were investigating "attempted murder, arson and an aggravated weapons offense".
They urged members of the public to stay away from the area, or keep inside their homes.
Newspapers Expressen and Aftonbladet initially reported that police had been fired on at the scene, but police said in a statement no officers had been wounded during the operation.
Students in several nearby schools as well as the one in question had been locked in "for safety reasons", police said, but they were gradually evacuated during the afternoon.
"It is a very painful day for all of Sweden," Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson wrote on X.
"My thoughts are also with all those whose normal school day was replaced with horror. Being confined to a classroom fearing for your own life is a nightmare that no one should have to experience."
He said the government was "closely monitoring developments".
According to several Swedish media, witnesses reported hearing what they believed to be automatic gunfire.
Though such shootings are rare, several other violent incidents have struck Swedish schools in recent years.
In March 2022, an 18-year-old student stabbed two teachers to death at a secondary school in the southern city of Malmo.
Two months earlier, a 16-year-old was arrested after wounding another student and a teacher with a knife at a school in the small town of Kristianstad.
In October 2015, three people were killed in a racially-motivated attack at a school in the western town of Trollhattan by a sword-wielding assailant who was later killed by police.
© Agence France-Presse