“The police say this man acted alone,” the priest said. “But this hate, it is coming from somewhere.”

A member of Kasselia’s congregation, 29-year-old Salim Iskef, was among those murdered in Orebro on Tuesday in Sweden’s first school shooting and the worst mass shooting in the country’s history. The gunman killed 10 students at an adult learning centre and then himself.

Among the dead are Syrians and Bosnians, according to residents and the embassies of those countries, but the police in Orebro have not given any details of the victims publicly.

Kasselia described Iskef as kind and thoughtful, keen to help other members of the community. He came to Sweden with his mother and sister, the priest said – refugees from Aleppo, where his father was killed in the war. Iskef was studying Swedish at the Risbergska school, the target of Tuesday’s attack.

“He was simply a good man,” the priest said. “He did not look for trouble. He showed only goodwill. He was a member of our community.”

The night after the attack, Kasselia sat with Iskef’s family to console them. Iskef was engaged and due to be married this summer. His fiancee Kareen Elia, 24, was “very badly affected”, the priest said, and was “going through a very difficult, very dark experience”.

At a memorial service in Orebro on Thursday night, Elia broke down in screams and tears and had to be carried out of the church.

In the days since the shooting, there has been a striking lack of information from the authorities. On Thursday night, police had still not confirmed the identity of the gunman – widely reported by Swedish media to be 35-year-old local Rickard Andersson – nor any details about his motive or the victims.

In a statement issued early on Tuesday, less than 24 hours after the attack, police said the shooter did not appear to be motivated by any ideology. On Thursday, Anna Bergkvist, who is leading the police investigation, appeared to walk the statement back.

“Why they said that, I cannot comment,” she told the BBC. “We are looking at different motives and we will declare it when we have it.”

Swedish police are usually cautious about naming suspects during an investigation, but the absence of official information has contributed to a feeling of fear and uncertainty among Orebro’s immigrant communities over the past few days.

“We are getting all our information from the media and I don’t know why,” said Nour Afram, 36, who was inside the Risbergska school when the attack began.

“We need more information,” she said. “We don’t know why he did it, why did he target this school? Was he sick or was it something else?”

Afram was waiting to go into class when she heard people screaming that there was a shooter – something so unbelievable to her she thought at first it was a prank.

“We started to run and then I heard the gunshots,” she said. “One at first, then tak tak tak – maybe ten shots. I was so scared I felt like my heart stopped in my chest.”

Afram, who immigrated from Syria to Orebro as a child, said she was afraid for the first time to send her three children to school in Sweden.

Zaki Aydin, a 50-year-old Syriac language teacher in Orebro, said he was afraid for the first time for his young students, who are mostly from the Middle East. “We are foreigners, we have to be careful now,” he said.

Aydin used to have the doors of his classroom and the church building open when he taught. “Now we are closing them,” he said. “And yesterday I asked someone to stand outside to prevent anyone we didn’t know already from coming in.”

One of the pupils at the school, 18-year-old Gabriel, said a “nightmare had come true” for Orebro.

“The problem is we have no motive, only speculation,” he said. “A lot of people my age are frightened to go to school, we feel like Sweden has become like America. The things you see on television have happened here.”

In the absence of any official news about the motive, all that the residents here in Orebro know is that the killer appears to have been a reclusive white Swedish man and that he targeted a school with a large immigrant student base.

Tomas Poletti Lundstrom, an academic researcher in racism at Uppsala University, who happens to live just a few minutes from the site of the attack and heard police helicopters fly over his home on Tuesday, said Orebro was facing a “deeply horrible time”.

“You can really sense it everywhere here, it is affecting everyone,” Lundstrom said. “We don’t know the motives of the shooter yet, but we are living in a very racist time and this is a school for a lot of immigrants.”

Attacks like the one at Risbergska were “the outcome of how our society looks at the moment, how our politicians talk, and how we talk about one another”, he said.

“The government and the main opposition support anti-immigrant policies and use anti-immigrant rhetoric,” he added. “This is what happens when politicians speak the way they are speaking.”

At the cordoned off entrance to Risbergska school early on Thursday morning, people were stopping by to leave flowers, light candles, or simply to stand and take in the scene. From the street, you can clearly see the front door through which the killer was filmed appearing to go from classroom to classroom with a rifle.

Among those who came alone and stood for a while by the collection of candles and flowers was the city’s mayor, John Johansson, who had made an official visit to the site the day before alongside the prime minister and the king and queen but stopped there again on his way to work on Thursday to pay his respects.

“I hope that the police will find conclusions soon,” Johansson said. “The city needs answers, our society needs answers, and the families of the victims need to know why this happened.”

But it was not time to “speculate or rush ahead”, he said. “We do not want to contribute to any false rumours, and so we hope the police will find answers as early as possible.”

Tony Estroem, a salesman from Eskilstuna, about 80km from Orebro, also stopped by the school on Thursday morning. “This kind of shooting, at a school, you read about it elsewhere but not in Sweden,” he said.

“It looks to be a Swedish guy, and perhaps that is better than if it had been an immigrant responsible,” he added. “Of course it is a terrible event either way, but we do not want to add more fuel to the fire.”

Police have given out some limited information about their investigation. They said that about 130 officers responded to the shooting in total, and that they were met by an “inferno” in the school. They said that they believe the gunman acted alone.

Family members, former school friends and neighbours have told Swedish media he had become a recluse in recent years and may have suffered with psychological issues.

There have been complaints about the handling of the case. The Bosnian ambassador Bojan Sosic, who also visited the site of the shooting, learned from residents that a Bosnian was among the dead.

“I find it odd, to say the least, that the police chooses to withhold information that pertains to foreign citizens from respective embassies,” he said.

Others, including members of the Syrian community, said they trusted the police were doing the right thing and only hoped to learn more soon. Kasselia, the Syrian Orthodox priest, said that the wider community “does not know what the police are thinking, but we trust that they have their own plan”.

Hundreds of people came to Kasselia’s church on Thursday night from the Syrian, Turkish, Iraqi and other migrant communities. A picture of Salim Iskef, one of the shooting’s victims, sat on an easel. Children from the congregation sung hymns. Iskef’s family, sitting in a pew near the front, were consumed by grief.

It is difficult to understand why these sorts of attacks happen even when the motive is known. Without it, it is even more confounding. A few hours before the memorial service began, Kasselia had been sitting in a pew in his empty church, trying to make sense of it.

“People die, of course. They become sick, they have some accident,” he said. “But this, how can we understand this? To be shot dead in a school. We could not dream of this. We cannot even describe it. Why?”

There was some comfort in hearing from the police that the gunman acted alone, Kasselia said. It left less anxiety of another attack.

“But this man had something in his heart, some kind of hate, that he gathered from somewhere,” the priest said. “We cannot say there are not others.”

More than 271,000 immigrants were deported from the US over the last fiscal year, according to a report released by the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency on Thursday.

The ICE report comes just weeks before President-elect Trump, who plans to make mass deportation a cornerstone of his incoming administration, takes office.

President Joe Biden in 2021 had pledged to pause deportations, but his administration ended up expanding it following a surge in border crossings.

In the newly released report, ICE said the steep climb in deportations last fiscal year was partly the result of a streamlined process.

More deportations flights went to further away destinations, including Africa and Asia, which did not accept US deportations for years, the agency said.A majority of the deportations in fiscal year 2024 involved migrants apprehended by border officials compared to those ICE arrested in the US interior.

Roughly 82% of the 271,000 immigrants deported that year were arrested by border agents.

President-elect Trump has vowed to launch the “largest deportation operation in history” when he returns to office on 20 January.

These promises, however, are likely to face enormous logistical and financial challenges.

Leading up to his decisive victory over Kamala Harris in November, Trump spent much of the time on the campaign trail attacking the White House’s border policies.

Trump transition spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt told Reuters that Biden’s deportations were insignificant compared to the high levels of illegal immigration during his presidency.

“On day one, President Trump will fix the immigration and national security nightmare that Joe Biden created by launching the largest mass deportation operation of illegal criminals in United States history,” she said.

The number of migrant encounters along the US-Mexico border reached a record high in December 2023, but have dropped significantly, particularly in the last few months, and are now at their lowest level since July 2020, according to US Customs and Border Protection (CBP).

It also attributed the rise in deportations to improved diplomatic efforts convincing countries to take back more deportees.

Mexican authorities have also increasingly been clamping down on the flow of migrants headed north to the US border.

In June, President Biden issued an executive order that sharply limited asylum which along with Mexico’s help led to a decrease in illegal border crossings.

Since then, the number of individuals released by the US Border Patrol pending immigration court proceedings is down 70%, the agency said.

They were held for years in a small fenced-off camp, before being brought to the UK earlier this month in what the government described as a “one-off” move in the interests of their welfare.

A spokesperson for the UK government said it was “carefully considering” Monday’s judgement.

Diego Garcia was never a “suitable long-term location for migrants” and the government “inherited a deeply troubling situation that remained unresolved under the last administration for years”, the spokesperson added.

Lawyer Simon Robinson with UK firm Duncan Lewis, which is representing some of the migrants, said “questions need to be answered about how, in the 21st century, this was able to happen”.

The ruling follows a landmark hearing held in a converted chapel on the island in September. The BBC gained unprecedented access to the island and the migrant camp there to cover the proceedings.

Diego Garcia is part of the Chagos Islands, or British Indian Ocean Territory (Biot), an area described as being “constitutionally distinct” from the UK. It is administered from London by a commissioner based out of the Foreign Office.

In their time on the island, the Tamils, including 16 children, were housed in military tents in the fenced camp, which was guarded at all times by private security company G4S.Tamils have described their time on the island as like living in “hell”.

“It’s like an open prison – we were not allowed to go outside, we were just living in a fence and in a tent,” one woman told the BBC after being brought to the UK with her husband and two children this month.

During a site visit to the camp in September, the court saw rips in some of the tents and rats nesting above military cots that the migrants were given as beds.

There were multiple hunger strikes and numerous incidents of self-harm and suicide attempts in response to the conditions in the camp, after which some people were transferred to Rwanda for medical treatment.

There were also cases and allegations of sexual assault and harassment within the camp by other migrants, including against children.

Margaret Obi, acting judge of the Biot supreme court, said in her ruling on Monday that the camp was a prison “in all but name” and “had been a prison from the outset”.

She found that one former deputy commissioner “appeared to have only a limited appreciation of the fundamental importance of liberty”.

Tom Short, a lawyer with firm Leigh Day, said the judgement was “not only a vindication of our clients’ rights but a triumph for the rule of law in the British Overseas Territories.”

“Such an affront to fundamental rights should never have happened and in due course this travesty of administration must be looked at in full,” he added.

The camp has now closed but two men with criminal convictions and another under investigation remain on Diego Garcia, the BBC understands.

Britain took control of the Chagos Islands from its then colony, Mauritius, in 1965 and went on to evict its population of more than 1,000 people to make way for the base.

The judgement comes after the UK agreed earlier this year to hand over the islands to Mauritius in a historic move.

Under the deal, which has still to be signed, Diego Garcia would continue to operate as a UK-US military base but Mauritius would take responsibility for any future migrant arrivals.

The speedboat capsized near the island of Rhodes as it attempted to flee a Greek patrol vessel, authorities said on Friday, adding that 18 people were rescued.

A coastguard statement said the driver “lost control” of the boat, causing several passengers to fall overboard.

Coastguard vessels retrieved eight bodies as a helicopter from the Hellenic Air Force searched for survivors. It remains unclear how many people were on board.

Greek authorities said they detected the vessel as it attempted to disembark people near Afandou Beach, on the eastern coast of the Greek island of Rhodes.

Greek media outlet Kathimerini reported that the boat collided with the coastguard’s vessel during the chase, adding that the driver of the boat was arrested.

Greece has seen a 25-percent rise this year in the number of migrant and refugee arrivals, with a 30-percent rise in Rhodes and the southeast Aegean, according to the Ministry of Migration and Asylum.

In late November, nine people, including six minors and two women, died after two boats sank in separate incidents near the islands of Samos and Lesbos.

Another five people died in a sinking near the island of Crete earlier this month.

Greece has been accused of adopting an increasingly hostile approach towards migration in recent years. Its coastguard has been repeatedly accused by asylum seekers and humanitarian organisations of capsizing boats by trying to tow them or prevent their disembarkation on its coasts.

The European Union also found evidence of human rights abuses at the recently constructed, EU-funded refugee camps on the Greek Aegean islands, including allegations of sexual and other violence against children.

Prosecutors in Sicily have asked judges to sentence him to six years in jail.

Salvini, who’s leader of the right-wing Lega party and a government ally of Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, has already said he will lodge an appeal if found guilty.

He has pushed back against the accusations, repeatedly alleging the judges were being “political” and maintaining his only guilt was in wanting to “protect Italy”.

One of the prosecutors, Geri Ferrara, told the court in September that human rights had to prevail over the “protection of state sovereignty”.

“A person stranded at sea must be saved and it is irrelevant whether they are classified as a migrant, a crewmember or a passenger”, she said.

An NGO ship called Open Arms was carrying 147 migrants picked up off the Libyan coast when it was prevented from docking on the Italian island of Lampedusa on the orders of Salvini, who was interior minister at the time.

The Open Arms remained at sea for almost three weeks, and the health situation of the migrants on board seriously deteriorated.

Eventually, the prosecutor in the Sicilian city of Agrigento, Luigi Patronaggio, ordered the vessel to be preventatively seized after inspecting it and noting the “difficult situation on board”.

Salvini maintained that the then-government of Giuseppe Conte had backed him fully in his mission to “close the ports” of Italy to NGO rescue ships.

PM Giorgia Meloni has stood by her deputy prime minister, saying he had her and her government’s “solidarity”.

“Turning the duty to protect Italy’s borders from illegal immigration into a crime is a very serious precedent,” she posted on X earlier this year.

She has never indicated that she would expect his resignation in case of a guilty verdict, and for his part Salvini has said he would not step down.

In recent months he has frequently referenced the trial and the forthcoming verdict in social media posts and during public speeches and interviews.

“I want to believe that Italy is a normal country, and in a normal country someone who defends borders isn’t found guilty,” he told Italian media earlier this week. If that was the case, he said, “it would be terrible news for the country and a reason to celebrate for people smugglers and enemies of Italy”.

He has also alleged that the Italian judiciary was “politicised” and that some magistrates were “clearly following left-wing politics”.

Elly Schlein, leader of the centre-left opposition Democratic Party, accused Salvini of “spreading propaganda and fuelling a serious institutional clash”.

The three female prosecutors in the case have been under police protection since September after being harassed online and receiving threats.

Members of Salvini’s Lega party have rallied around him and are preparing demonstrations in his support.

On Wednesday, Lega MEPs turned up at a European Parliament session in Strasbourg wearing t-shirts that read “Guilty of defending Italy” – a slogan Salvini has used in the past.

“A conviction would be an incredibly serious matter,” said Lega deputy secretary Andrea Crippa: “It would be like convicting the entire Italian people, the Italian parliament and the elected government.”

Lombardy’s Lega party president, Attilio Fontana, said a guilty verdict would be “so aberrant, even from a judicial point of view, that I don’t even want to think about it”.

Others outside Italy have waded into the debate too.

“That mad prosecutor should be the one who goes to prison for six years,” Elon Musk tweeted, while Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, a close ally of Salvini, called the trial “shameful”.

If convicted, Salvini has said he will appeal against the verdict “all the way to the Supreme Court of Cassation” – Italy’s highest court.

That process could take months and Salvini’s position in the government and parliament would be unaffected.