It wrote in its annual report that while Sweden joining the Nato military alliance had strengthened its security, it had also led to increased Russian intelligence activity.

Sapo also said that the security situation in Sweden is serious and may get worse -with foreign powers operating in more threatening ways and resorting to hybrid warfare, alongside incidents of violent extremism.

Charlotte von Essen, the head of Sapo, said there was a “tangible risk that the security situation can deteriorate further” in a way that may be hard to predict.

Sweden became a Nato member last year, seeing it as the best guarantee against Russia following its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

That January, its civil defence minister warned “there could be war in Sweden” in the near future due to Russian aggression.

Sapo said on Tuesday that Russia’s intelligence activities were primarily aimed at undermining cohesion between Nato members, counteracting Western support for Ukraine, and circumventing sanctions.

It said these activities showed Russia was becoming “increasingly offensive and risk-prone” in the face of a build up of Swedish, and wider European, defences.

“When gathering intelligence, the Russian security and intelligence services use a wide range of resources and different platforms,” the agency wrote, adding that these had been limited by expelling intelligence officers.

Ms von Essen said Swedes needed to be vigilant about “widespread anti-state narratives and conspiracy theories” that seek to act as a destabilising force, adding that it was “important that we do not normalise the new situation”.

In its report, Sapo mentioned suspicious incidents involving infrastructure and which countries may have been behind “in some cases”.

A series of undersea cables and gas pipelines have been damaged in suspected attacks since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, prompting Nato to launch a monitoring mission in the sea.

The latest such breach was reported last month near Gotland – Sweden’s largest island.

The Swedish government also identified Iran and China as posing significant security threats to the Nordic country.

Last year, Sapo accused Iranian intelligence of hacking into a text messaging service to send 15,000 messages to Swedes, after several Quran burnings.

Sapo’s 2025 report said foreign intelligence threats included cyber-attacks, technology theft and tracking the movement of foreign dissidents living in Sweden.

It also said the threat of terrorism remains high, but was diversifying to not just include “ideologically motivated actors”, but also violence instigated by a foreign power and young people with a fascination with violence who have been radicalised online.

Ms von Essen said that Sapo had seen examples of nations including Russia and Iran inducing individuals, often young people, to carry out acts of violence.

Serious attacks have occurred in France, Germany and Austria, the Sapo chief said.

Sweden itself was dealing with the aftermath of “the terrible incident in Orebro”, she noted, referring to Sweden’s worst mass shooting last month in which a gunman attacked an education centre in central Sweden, killing nine people.

Sapo said violent Islamist extremism and violent right-wing terrorism remained prominent threats.

Sweden remains on high alert for terrorism – with the threat level assessed at four out of a five-point scale.

Police told the BBC that the local government’s water unit received an alarm for a water pump on Sunday at 17:30 local time (16:30 GMT).

“Technicians found that someone has opened an electrical cabinet, pulled out a cable and thereby cut off the power to the pump,” police said. The technician put the cable back and reset the alarm at 21:30 local time, and the pump is now working.

Police have not said who they suspect could be responsible. The incident comes after the suspected sabotage of an undersea telecoms cable connecting Germany and Finland last month.

There has been an increase in damage to infrastructure in the Baltic Sea in recent months, largely caused by ships dragging their anchors across cables. European leaders have suspected Russian involvement.

However, poor weather, inadequate equipment and human error has been found to be responsible for some damages.

Following the discovery of the suspected sabotage on Gotland on Sunday, Patrik Johansson, who heads the local water and sanitation department, said: “We can see that it is human influence that caused the damage.”

There has been no impact on the drinking water, the statement added.

Susanne Bjergegaard-Pettersson, Gotland’s head of water and sewage, told Aftonbladet, which first reported the incident, that the water pumps drew from a lake that supplies large parts of the island.

The BBC has contacted Bjergegaard-Pettersson for more information.

Gotland is a large island in the Baltic Sea that sits to the east of mainland Sweden and west of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia.

A series of undersea cables and gas pipelines have been damaged in suspected attacks since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, prompting Nato to launch a monitoring mission in the sea last month.

The Swedish coastguard has dispatched a research vessel to the east of Gotland, which is the country’s largest island and the reported location of the latest breach.

Sweden’s Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson has said the government is aware of the cable break and added it “must be seen in the context of the current serious security situation”.

The owner of the cable, Finnish telecom operators Cinia, said it detected minor damage to its fibre-optic cable but added it was still functioning as usual.

Cinia also said it is the third time this cable has been damaged in recent months.

The cable was severed in November last year.

There has been an increase in damage to undersea infrastructure in the Baltic Sea over the past few months, largely caused by civilian ships dragging their anchors across cables.

Swedish police have said “the preliminary investigation relates to suspected sabotage”. The Swedish coastguard has said they do not know when the damage occurred.

“We have a ship called KBV 003 on its way to east of Gotland. It is in the Swedish economic zone and we are assisting with the crime scene investigation,” the coastguard added.

European leaders have suspected Russian involvement in breaches.

However, poor weather, inadequate equipment and human error has been found to be responsible for some damages.

Bulgarian ship the Vezhen was cleared of sabotage by the Swedish authorities earlier this month.

Lina Ishaq, 52, was found guilty of holding three Yazidi women and six Yazidi children as slaves in Raqqa between 2014-2016 in September last year.

It is the first time IS crimes against the Yazidis, one of Iraq’s religious minorities, have been tried in Sweden.

Ishaq joined IS and moved her family to Syria in 2013. She is already serving jail sentences for taking her two year-old son to Syria and “failing to prevent” IS from using her 12-year-old son as a child soldier. He died in 2017, aged 16.

Ishaq forced her prisoners to wear a veil and practise Islam, and she physically assaulted them.

“The convicted woman was part of the large-scale enslavement system which IS introduced for Yazidi women and children,” said Stockholm District Court presiding judge, Maria Ulfsdotter Klang.

“She has acted independently in maintaining the enslavement and deprivation of liberty of the victims and contributed to trafficking them further.”

The Yazidis are an ancient religious minority based largely in the Sinjar region of northern Iraq.

In early August 2014 IS invaded Yazidi settlements in the Sinjar region launching a genocidal campaign against them.

Over a period of three years about 5,000 Yazidis were killed by IS and half a million people were displaced.

More than 6,000 women and children were taken captive and held as slaves. IS members tortured their detainees and subjected them to strategic sexual violence aiming to eradicate the Yazidi people, according to the UN.

Lina Ishaq was born in Iraq to a Christian family, who moved to Sweden when she was a child, Swedish media report. She converted to Islam prior to her marriage.

Along with around 300 other Swedish nationals, a quarter of them women, Ishaq joined IS in 2013.

When the so-called IS caliphate began to collapse in 2017, Ishaq fled Raqqa and escaped to Turkey. She was extradited to Sweden in 2020.

Sweden is now home to around 6,000 Yazidis.

Dawood Khalaf, chairman of the Yazidi association in Skaraborg has said Ishaq’s prosecution has helped build trust between the community in Sweden and local authorities.

“I know women who have been called for questioning by Swedish police who have not dared to testify for fear of being handed over to IS,” he told public broadcaster SVT. “After this indictment, the picture has changed.”

Ishaq’s lawyer Mikael Westerlund said Ishaq still denied the charges and would consider an appeal.

Seven women and four men between 28 and 68 died in the attack, police said, including the gunman, who killed himself.

Named widely in Swedish media as 35-year-old Rickard Andersson, the suspect had four legally owned rifles, three of which were found in the school, police said.

Sweden’s centre-right coalition, which relies on the support of the far-right Sweden Democrats party, said on Friday it would seek to increase vetting around gun purchases and ban certain types of weapon.

“There are certain types of weapons that are so dangerous that they should only be possessed for civilian purposes as an exception,” the government said in a statement.

Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson, on a visit to Latvia, told reporters: “We have to ensure that only the right people have guns in Sweden.”

The Sweden Democrats said that it agreed with proposals to amend the law, including greater restrictions on access to semi-automatic weapons.

“The horrific act of violence in Orebro raises several key questions about gun legislation,” the party said in a statement.

The AR-15, a particular style of semi-automatic rifle that is both powerful and can carry large magazines, was singled out by the government as an example of weapons that could be restricted.

Police have not said exactly which weapons were used in the attack, but the AR-15 has been used in many mass shootings in the US.

They confirmed that several long rifles were found at the site of the attack in Orebro, along with 10 empty magazines.

Under current Swedish gun laws, anyone over 18 who does not have a criminal record can apply for a permit for a shotgun, handgun or semi-automatic rifle.

They must justify to the police why they need a gun. People over 20 can apply for a special dispensation to own a fully automatic weapon.

Around 580,000 Swedes have a weapons licence out of a population of around 10.5 million, according to figures from Swedish broadcaster SVT.

A 2017 Swiss study found there were about 2.3 million guns held by civilians in Sweden. That is around 23 guns per 100 people, compared with 29 in Norway and 120 per 100 in the US.

To obtain a hunting licence in Sweden, a theory and practical test is required. About 280,000 Swedes have one.

Police have yet to publicly identify the victims of the attack in Orebro, or declare a motive for the attack.

Among the dead, according to family and community members, were Syrians who fled the war there as refugees, as well as one Bosnian.

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 need more information,” said Nour Afram, 36, who was inside the Risbergska school when the attack began.

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

Afram was waiting to go into class when she heard people screaming that there was a shooter.

“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.”

Sweden has a relatively high level of gun ownership and gun crime, by European standards, though most weapons are legally owned and used for hunting.

Gun crime is mostly associated with gangs, who have also taken to using bombs to target one another.

Non-gang-related gun crime is less common, and Tuesday’s attack the nation’s first school shooting and its worst mass shooting. A total of four people were killed in two separate school stabbings in 2015 and 2022.

They were killed at an adult education centre in the city of Orebro on Tuesday, about 125 miles (200km) from Stockholm, in an attack that has sent shockwaves through Sweden.

All of the victims lived in Orebro, but so far authorities have declined to share their identities or any other details about them.

Police also confirmed on Friday that the suspected gunman was a 35-year-old man from the area. He has been named widely in Swedish media as Rickard Andersson.

Anna Bergkvist, the head of the police investigation, told the BBC on Thursday that suspect had killed himself inside the school.

Police have confirmed that the suspect owned four rifles legally, three of which were found inside the school after the attack alongside 10 empty magazines.

Sweden’s coalition government on Friday announced plans to strengthen the country’s laws, making it harder to purchase guns and restricting certain types of rifle.

In the absence of official confirmation of the victims’ identities, information has come out instead through their families and communities.

Among them was Salim Isker, a 29-year-old man who fled the conflict in Syria in 2015 with his mother and sister after his father was killed there.

Isker was studying at the Risbergska centre, where the attack happened – a school popular with immigrants learning Swedish and other subjects.

Isker’s fiancee Kareen Elia, 24, attended a memorial service in Orebro on Thursday night along with his mother and other members of his family.

Jacob Kasselia, the priest at the Syrian Orthodox church attended by Isker and his family, told the BBC he was a “simply a good man”.

“He did not look for trouble. He showed only goodwill. He was a member of our community,” Kasselia said.

Bassam Al Sheleh, a 48-year-old baker and cook and father of two, has also been named by Swedish media as one of the victims of the attack.

He was reportedly studying at the Risbergska centre to improve his English.

A national of Bosnia and Herzegovina was killed and another was injured, the Bosnian foreign ministry said, citing information shared by Orebro residents.

In a post on social media on Friday, Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson acknowledged that the event had caused fear among immigrant communities, and urged people to “unite and stand behind all that we hold dear together”.

“My thoughts are with the relatives who have now received the call that is the worst one can get. To you, I want to say: you are not alone. We stand beside you,” he wrote.

The gunman’s motive remains unknown. Video filmed inside the building during the attack and published by Swedish media appeared to record someone using anti-immigrant sentiments, but the footage has not been confirmed as accurate by the authorities.

Members of Orebro’s Middle Eastern immigrant communities have told the BBC they are feeling vulnerable and have been taking additional precautions in the days since the attack.

Sweden’s centre-right coalition, which relies on the support of the far-right Sweden Democrats party, said on Friday it would seek to increase vetting around gun purchases and ban certain types of weapon.

“There are certain types of weapons that are so dangerous that they should only be possessed for civilian purposes as an exception,” the government said in a statement.

Prime Minister Kristersson, on a visit to Latvia, told reporters the government had to “ensure that only the right people have guns in Sweden”.

The Sweden Democrats said that it agreed with proposals to amend the law, including greater restrictions on access to semi-automatic weapons.

“The horrific act of violence in Orebro raises several key questions about gun legislation,” the party said in a statement.

The AR-15, a particular style of semi-automatic rifle that is both powerful and can carry large magazines, was singled out by the government as an example of weapons that could be restricted.

Under current Swedish gun laws, anyone over 18 who does not have a criminal record can apply for a permit for a shotgun, handgun or semi-automatic rifle.

They must justify to the police why they need a gun. People over 20 can apply for a special dispensation to own a fully automatic weapon.

Around 580,000 Swedes have a weapons licence out of a population of around 10.5 million, according to figures from Swedish broadcaster SVT.

A 2017 Swiss study found there were about 2.3 million guns held by civilians in Sweden. That is around 23 guns per 100 people, compared with 29 in Norway and 120 per 100 in the US.

To obtain a hunting licence in Sweden, a theory and practical test is required. About 280,000 Swedes have one.

Sweden has a relatively high level of gun ownership and gun crime, by European standards, though most weapons are legally owned and used for hunting.

Gun crime is mostly associated with gangs, who have also taken to using bombs to target one another.

Non-gang-related gun crime is less common, and Tuesday’s attack the nation’s first school shooting and its worst mass shooting. A total of four people were killed in two separate school stabbings in 2015 and 2022.

It was the first information about those murdered, and it came from two embassies rather than police, who said only that there were victims of a number of nationalities.

Police said the suspected gunman, named locally as 35-year-old Rickard Andersson, was found dead afterwards, with three guns by his side.

The regional police chief said police faced an “inferno” when they entered the school buildings: “Dead people, screams and smoke.”

Lars Wiren spoke of a scene of chaos at Risbergska school, with people running in and out of a very large complex that stretched over about 17,000 sq m.

Anna Bergqvist, the head of the police investigation, told the BBC police could confirm only that people of multiple nationalities and ages were caught up in the shooting.

One Bosnian national was killed and another wounded, the Bosnian embassy said. Ambassador Bojan Sosic laid flowers outside the school in Orebro on Thursday.

The Syrian embassy gave no details of the number of Syrians affected, but said: “We offer our sincere condolences and sympathies to the families of the victims, including dear Syrian citizens, and to the friendly Swedish people.”

However, it soon emerged that Salim Iskef, a 29-year-old Orthodox Christian who fled the war in Syria in 2015, was one of the 10 victims.

Santa Maria church in Orebro said his life had ended tragically in the shooting.

Jacob Kasselia, the priest at Orebro’s Syrian Orthodox church, told the BBC that Mr Iskef was a kind and thoughtful young man who had arrived from Aleppo in 2015 and was due to get married this summer.

Swedish reports said he had become a Swedish citizen.

The priest said Mr Iskef’s fiancée had been “very badly affected” by the murder.

“She is going through a very difficult, very dark experience,” Mr Kasselia said.

Mr Iskef’s aunt told Arabic-language website Alkompis he had made a video call to his mother to say he had been shot and asked her to look after his fiancée.

The Bosnian embassy said it had chosen to wait for official information from police, although it had relevant information from Orebro’s Bosnian community.

There has been some frustration in Orebro at the slow pace at which police have been releasing information about their inquiry.

“I find it odd, to say the least, that the police choose to withhold information that pertains to foreign citizens, from respective embassies,” Ambassador Sosic told the BBC. He described the Bosnian community as among the best integrated in Sweden.

Police in Orebro say the alarm was raised at 12:33 (11:33 GMT) on Tuesday and after about five minutes the first patrols had reached the school, which sits on a large education campus about 200km (124 miles) west of Stockholm.

Police chief Lars Wiren said 130 police officers had eventually reached the school and found an “inferno”.

He told the BBC that there was no evidence bombs had been detonated, but said there was thick smoke that could have come from the suspect setting fires or smoke grenades.

He said they believed the suspect had fired at police but that officers did not fire back. The gunman was found dead at the scene over an hour later.

Police investigator Anna Bergqvist said that the suspect had killed himself.

She confirmed that three guns were found at the scene next to the gunman, of a total of four known to be legally registered to the suspect.

However, she refused to comment on the types of guns or ammunition used.

Police remain tight-lipped about both the suspect and the possible motive behind the attack.

Anna Bergqvist explained that the delay in naming the suspect was because of the wait for DNA samples to be matched.

Swedish police are usually cautious about naming suspects and would not normally do so ahead of charges being laid, but Ms Bergqvist said they expected to make an exception in this case and release a name in the coming days.

Risbergska school provides adult education for people aged over 20 who did not finish primary or secondary school, as well as Swedish classes for immigrants.

Young residents in Orebro had already expressed fears of a racial element to the shooting, and the Syrian statement confirmed that immigrants were among the victims.

Sweden’s TV4 channel broadcast a video recorded from a school toilet during the gun attack, in which the words “away from Europe!” can be heard.

It is not clear who shouted the words and police have been careful not to discuss a motive.

However, Ms Bergqvist appeared to row back the initial statement from authorities on Tuesday that the motive for the attack was not ideological.

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

Rickard Andersson has been described locally as a recluse and one report by Swedish website Aftonbladet suggested his attack may have targeted local social services.

A source told the site that he had argued with a social worker after he had lost his welfare benefits because he had not done enough to find work.

Police on Tuesday had said that the suspect had no previous convictions, no apparent links to gangs and they did not believe the attack was motivated by terrorism.

“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.”

But on Wednesday he was clutching a bunch of red flowers to lay in tribute to those murdered in Sweden’s worst ever mass shooting.

“I was shocked and didn’t know if I wanted to come to school today after what happened so nearby” he explains to us.

Ismail’s own elementary school is next to the adult learning centre that was targeted yesterday.

Although police still have not given a motive for the attack, Ismail – who is Kurdish – says he fears there was a clear racial element to the shooting.

“In this school, it’s only newcomers to Sweden. There’s not so many Swedish people. So, I think it was targeted for one special group of people.”

All day, there’s been a steady procession of locals lighting candles and gazing across to the school site which remains sealed off.

Vacant faces in the icy wind reflect the sense of shock that has gripped many Swedes in the past 24 hours.

A hush descended on the scene when Sweden’s King arrived to leave his own flowers. The solemnity echoing the national mood as flags fly at half-mast.

The collective grief is complicated by the lack of any explanation for the assault. The police, now in the midst of huge investigation haven’t given away anything to that end.

Trying to build a profile of a “clean skin” – someone not previously known to the police or security service – makes any probe all the more difficult.

But the scale of the loss of life means the public and politicians want answers from the police now.

More than 100 specialist officers are involved, on a local, regional and national level.

Unconfirmed reports in the Swedish media say the gunman was a 35-year-old local man who legally owned a gun.

Reham Attala, 21, is a law student also thinks it was no coincidence this college – popular with immigrants – was chosen, rather than others which were reported to be near the suspect’s home.

“I’m so sad and scared” she tells us at the site of the shooting. “This shouldn’t have happened.”

Reham explains that her dad is Syrian and her mum is Palestinian but for her Sweden is home. She’s has lived in Orebro for the past 11 years.

She is alarmed that the gunmen attacked a school where Swedish for Immigrants (SFI) courses are known to be taught.

“Those people lost yesterday were studying Swedish and this make me think about my future and am I even going to live here, should I have children here? All these questions.”

People should be free to learn and live in peace on campus without fear of this happening, she sighs.

Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson described Tuesday’s attack at Risbergska school in Orebro, 200km (124 miles) west of the capital city Stockholm, as the “worst mass shooting in Swedish history”.

Police said they believe the male perpetrator to be among the dead and that he was not previously known to them. There was no immediately identifiable motive and he was believed to be acting alone, they said.

“It is difficult to take in the magnitude of what has happened today,” Kristersson said at an evening news conference.

Police earlier warned the death toll could continue to rise as several people had been injured.

A number of the injured have been taken to hospital, with at least four people undergoing operations.

Police initially said five people had been shot, and the incident was being investigated as an attempted murder, arson and an aggravated weapons offence.

Local media later began reporting that several people had died, before police said “around 10” people had been killed but they “could not be more specific” about the number of fatalities.

They also confirmed there did not appear to be a “terror” motive behind the attack.

Police heard reports of a shooting taking place at Risbergska school – an adult education centre – at 12:33 local time (11:44 GMT). The facility sits on a campus that is home to other schools.

These centres are attended primarily by people who have not finished primary or secondary school.

Earlier, students at several nearby schools were being kept indoors “for security purposes”.

“We don’t want members of the public to go there,” Orebro police chief Roberto Eid Forest warned.

The justice minister, who appeared alongside the prime minister on Tuesday evening, shared his condolences for those affected by the “tragedy” and reassured citizens that schools in the country would be safe to return to on Wednesday.

“[I’ve] never seen a school shooting of this magnitude,” Gunnar Strommer said.

Nearby hospitals had cleared their emergency rooms and intensive care units to free up space for patients, local media reported.

Orebro University Hospital said five people injured by gunshot wounds were treated at its emergency room. An additional sixth person, not injured by a gun, had “minor injuries” treated, it said.

No children were among the people being treated there, the municipality for Orebro County said in an update.

Teacher Lena Warenmark told SVT, Swedish public radio, she heard around 10 gunshots close to her study.

Earlier in the day, Prime Minister Kristersson remarked on how today is “a very painful day for all in Sweden” as he shared that those who had a “normal school day” replaced “with terror” are all in his thoughts.

“Being confined to a classroom with fear for your own life is a nightmare that no one should have to experience,” Kristersson said in a post on X.

He later asked people to give police the freedom and the space they need to do their work and investigations, as he also stressed that there was no further risks to attending school the next day.

More information will be shared by police and the Swedish government in the coming days, Kristersson added.