At least 3 killed in Stockholm after vehicle drives into crowd
Van slams into pedestrians outside busy department store on main street in Swedish capital
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At least three people were killed and several injured in central Stockholm on Friday when a van drove into a crowd outside a busy department store, crashing into the shop.
According to British ITV citing local radio, “at least three” were killed in the incident which occurred just before 1300 GMT near the Swedish capital’s biggest pedestrian street.
“Police received a call from SOS Alarm that a person in a vehicle has injured other people on Drottninggatan,” Swedish police wrote on Twitter.
Police spokeswoman Towe Hagg said people had been injured but she would not confirm the deaths.
Watch on #Periscope: Looks like attack (Stockholm) https://t.co/Gl9Z90nw7s
— PIOTR ZALEWSKI (@zalewski_piotr) April 7, 2017
⚡️ “Vehicle crashes into pedestrians in Stockholm ” #Breakingnews #Stockholm https://t.co/XWjwAPsCSs
— John Morrison (@JAMorrison42) April 7, 2017
Swedish broadcaster SVT says shots have been fired and that people in the area were fleeing the scene.
The Swedish news agency TT says several people have been rushed away in ambulances, and live television footage showed smoke coming out of the department store that the truck smashed into.
It was at first not clear if the incident was an attack or an accident, but Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Lofven said Friday that it indeed all pointed to “a terror attack.”
Friday’s intentiona crash follows a series of vehicular attacks in Europe in recent years.
Last month, Khalid Masood, a 52-year-old convert to Islam known to British security services, drove a car at high speed into pedestrians on London’s Westminster Bridge before launching a frenzied knife attack on a policeman guarding the parliament building.
The incident killed five people. Masood was shot dead by police.
In December, a terrorist hijacked a truck and slammed into shoppers at a Christmas market in Berlin, killing 12 people, including an Israeli woman.
That attacker was shot dead by police in Milan four days later, and the rampage was claimed by the Islamic State.
The worst vehicular attack was on Bastille Day on July 14 in France last year, when a terrorist rammed a truck into a crowd in the Mediterranean resort of Nice, killing 86 people.
He was shot dead by police, and the Islamic State group claimed responsibility.
In 2014, IS spokesman Abu Mohammed al-Adnani called for attacks on citizens of Western countries and gave instructions on how they could be carried out without military equipment, using rocks or knives, or by running people over in vehicles.
There have also been false alerts, however.
Earlier Friday, Belgium dropped terrorism charges against a driver who sped into a crowded shopping area in Antwerp last month, which sparked fears of a copy-cat terror attack.
However, the driver, a Tunisian man identified as Mohamed R., remained in custody on a weapons offence related to the incident, the federal prosecutor’s office said.
The Times of Israel Community.