Sweden Suffers A Terrorist Attack

2024 Author: Steven Freeman | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 08:15

Again a vehicle and again the center of a European capital.

This time the scene has been Stockholm, where a truck spread terror this Friday by running over pedestrians who were passing through a well-known shopping street in the center of the Swedish capital, to end up crashing into the windows of a department store.

For now, the Swedish authorities put at two fatalities and multiple injuries the balance of what Prime Minister Stefan Lofven called a "terrorist attack".

"Sweden has been attacked," Lofven said in a message on Twitter. "Everything indicates that it is an act of terrorism. Be alert and listen to the information that the police offer.”

For its part, SVT television raises the death toll to five, while Swedish radios mentioned that the fatalities were three. The Swedish intelligence agency has limited itself to pointing out that there are a large number of wounded, according to the AP agency.

Although a person was initially said to be in custody, authorities later clarified that no arrests have been made. Right now, a huge search and capture operation of the truck driver has been launched, of which they have distributed an image.

According to Swedish media, the truck entered a pedestrian-friendly area of central Stockholm, and over several blocks began to ram everything in its path until it crashed into the windows of the luxurious Ahlens department store located in Drottninggatan Street.

In its wake it left a trail of broken glass, personal effects and bodies that reminded of similar attacks in the French city of Nice, the Christmas market in Berlin and the Westminster Bridge in London.

Just today it became known that one of the seriously wounded in the attack in the British capital - a Romanian tourist who fell into the River Thames - lost his life, bringing to five those killed in that attack.

In the images arriving from Stockholm you could see at least two apparently deceased people covered by a blanket and the truck, with an advertisement for a brand of beer, on fire and embedded in the store, part of a well-known chain in Sweden.

According to the AP, which cites a Swedish newspaper as a source, the brewing company Spendrups had reported that one of its trucks had been stolen hours before the attack.