... and in Sweden, is this the face of truck terrorist?
2 weeks after Westminster carnage, four die on streets of Stockholm after lorry is hijacked
TERRORISTS brought carnage to central Stockholm yesterday just 16 days after the Westminster atrocity.
Suspected Islamic State fanatics mowed down pedestrians with a 30-ton lorry, killing at least four and injuring 15 – nine of them seriously.
As shoppers ran in terror, the driver crashed into a busy department store before fleeing at about 3pm local time, before the truck burst into flames.
Two other suspects were tackled to the ground and arrested nearby.
Some witnesses claimed the terrorists had also opened fire on pedestrians and attacked them with knives.
The Swedish capital was put on lockdown with residents warned to stay inside as police launched a major manhunt to catch the killer.
All trains in and out of the city were cancelled and motorists were told to stay away from the centre.
Last night, officers arrested a suspect in the north of Stockholm who ‘may be connected with the incident’, police said.
The man, described as ‘lightly injured’, admitted responsibility for the attack, security sources told the Aftonbladet newspaper.
However, police said they were still hunting for the driver of the lorry.
Yesterday’s rampage echoes the attack outside Parliament in Westminster last month, when Khalid Masood killed four pedestrians and injured dozens more with a Hyundai 4x4. He then stabbed PC Keith Palmer to death before he was shot. But the use of a lorry to mow down a crowd is more reminiscent of terror attacks in Nice and Berlin last year.
Security was being beefed up across European cities in the wake of the Stockholm attack.
In Norway, one of the few European countries where police are not routinely armed, officials announced that officers in major urban areas would now carry firearms until further notice.
As world leaders sent messages of condolence, Sweden’s King Carl XVI Gustaf said his ‘thoughts are going out to those that were affected, and to their families’.
Prime minister Stefan Lofven said the incident appeared to have been a terror attack and police issued a CCTV image of a suspect at a train station.
One of the terrorists stole the truck as its driver was making a delivery from brewery firm Spendrups to a restaurant in the city. The driver was hurt in the hijacking after trying to cling to the lorry.
Witnesses described how the attacker deliberately swerved into pedestrians along Drottninggatan – a major shopping area in Stockholm, equivalent to London’s Oxford Street. Video footage showed hundreds of shoppers fleeing moments after the lorry crashed into the Ahlens department store.
Veronica Durango, 42, was 3ft from the lorry as it sped past her. She said: ‘I’m all shaky. I could have died. If I had not jumped aside, it would have been me.’
Armed police wearing gas masks arrived minutes later to a scene of devastation, with bodies of the dead and injured lying across the pedestrianised street. Paramedics desperately tried to save the lives of the wounded, many of whom had suffered catastrophic injuries.
The street was left spattered with blood, with the bodies of the dead covered in blankets.
Annevi Petersson, who was in the fitting rooms of the store at the time of the attack, said: ‘There was a lady lying with a severed foot. There was blood everywhere. There were bodies on the ground everywhere, and a sense of panic, people standing by their loved ones, but also people running away.’
Last night, hours before the third arrest, police released a picture of a suspect wearing a green jacket, white shoes and a grey hoodie.
National police commissioner Dan Eliasson said ‘many people’ had been injured, but he could not confirm the number of dead or wounded. He added: ‘We have no contact with the person or persons
who drove the truck.’ Senior police officer Mats Lofving added: ‘We don’t know whether this incident is isolated or whether we can expect more. We have police positioned at several strategic places with a particular risk threat.’
The crash is close to the scene of a terror attack in 2010, when Taimour Abdulwahab al-Abdaly, an Iraqi-born Swedish citizen radicalised in Luton, blew himself up. No one else was killed.
Mayor of London Sadiq Khan last night said that the British capital ‘stands united with Stockholm’.
He said Sweden has ‘seen a despicable act of terrorism aimed at harming innocent people and attacking our shared values of democracy, freedom, justice and tolerance’.
‘We share a steely determination with the people of Stockholm that we will never allow terrorists to succeed,’ Mr Khan added.