Two women were stabbed to death at a high school in southern Sweden on Monday, police said, adding that an 18-year-old student has been arrested.
Police said in a statement after the attack at Malmö Latinskola, a secondary school in the center of Malmö, the country’s third largest city, that the two women, aged 50, “were school employees”.
Local media said the alleged attacker called the emergency number to tell him where he was and had put down his weapon and admitted to killing two people.
According to various Swedish media, he was armed with a knife and an ax.
According to the police account, the suspect was arrested without difficulty soon after the first patrol arrived.
Earlier in the evening, police had reported injuries to two of the nearly 50 people at the school at the time of the incident.
Officials said two victims were “taken to hospital but their lives could not be saved”.
Police were alerted around 5:15 pm (1615 GMT) and the first patrol was able to enter the school.
Footage shows the heavily equipped and armed police inspecting the interior of the building.
Several hours later the school was cordoned off with police tape, and several police cars and ambulances were still at the scene.
Police spokesman Nils Knorling told AFP: “Following initial reports of screaming at the school, “we have received further information that a serious crime is being committed and that violence is taking place at the school.”
Speaking in front of the building, he said, “The first police patrol at the site was able to reach the school and arrest a male suspect. They also noticed that there were two injured people inside the school.”
No motive has been established yet.
After conducting an extensive inspection of the scene and interviewing witnesses, officers are sure that the suspect acted alone.
Asa Nilsson, one of the heads of the investigation, said: “We have a lot of work to do to understand what happened and the motivation behind this horrific act.”
A press conference is scheduled for Tuesday at 9:30 am (0830 GMT).
In January, a 16-year-old boy was arrested after injuring a student and a teacher in the southern Swedish town of Kristianstad.
The case was linked to a similar attack in August in the town of Eslov, about 50 kilometers (30 miles) away, when a student attacked a 45-year-old school employee.
In October 2015, three people were killed in a racially motivated attack on a school in the western city of Trollhattan, one attacker was later killed by police.
