Blood everywhere: Witnesses recall Sweden’s school shooting horror

Tragedy struck Sweden on Tuesday. A mass shooting at Risbergska School in Örebro left eleven people dead, including the suspected gunman. Witnesses are in shock. The nation mourns.

Chaos and bloodshed

Marwa, a student at the education center, saw the horror unfold. “A guy next to me was shot in the shoulder. He was bleeding a lot,” she told TV4 Sweden. Turning around, she saw three more people on the floor, covered in blood.

Panic took over. Marwa and a friend rushed to help. They wrapped a shawl around the wounded man’s shoulder to stop the bleeding. “Everyone was so shocked,” she said.

Gunshots shatter the silence

Teacher Lena Warenmark heard the attack from her study. “There were about ten gunshots,” she told Swedish public radio. First, a few bangs. Then a pause. More gunfire followed. She locked herself inside her study, trapped for over an hour.

Police rushed to the scene at 12:33 local time (11:44 GMT). The facility, part of a larger campus, serves adults who have not finished primary or secondary school. Officers are still investigating the number of injured victims. The motive remains unknown. Authorities say, however, that the attack was not ideological.

Nation in shock

Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson called the shooting “the worst mass attack in Swedish history.” The scale of the tragedy is overwhelming.

Families waited anxiously for news. Ali el Mokad stood outside a hospital, desperate for updates. His cousin was inside. “It doesn’t feel very good actually,” he told Reuters. His cousin’s friend had called, crying uncontrollably. “She fell to the ground. She said there was blood everywhere. People lying on the floor, injured. It was terrible.”

A rare but devastating attack

School shootings in Sweden are extremely rare. The country has seen violent incidents before, but never on this scale. Last September, a 15-year-old student shot a classmate near Stockholm. That attack, however, was linked to Sweden’s gang violence problem.

Now, the nation grieves. The investigation continues. The question remains: why did this happen?