The Courier & Advertiser (Angus and Dundee)
Stockholm lorry terror kills four
Hijacked vehicle hurtles into shopping district, killing four before crashing into store and catching fire
At least four people were killed and many more badly injured when a lorry careered into shoppers on a busy Stockholm street.
Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Lofven said it appeared to be an act of terror.
Swedish police said last night that the driver of the hijacked beer lorry was still at large.
Four people died and nine were left seriously injured after a terrorist used a lorry to plough through pedestrians in Stockholm.
Emergency services said 15 people, including children, were being treated following the incident in a busy shopping district at the heart of the Swedish capital.
At a press conference, police said they could not rule out the death toll rising.
A manhunt is under way for the driver of the vehicle, who police said is still at large.
Detectives arrested a man who matched the description of the person who they issued an image of in the wake of the onslaught.
Border control has been reinforced in response to the attack and the area where the lorry crashed remains sealed off.
Senior police officer Mats Lofving said: “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.”
Widespread condemnation poured in from across the globe as news of the attack broke, including from German Chancellor Angela Merkel and UK Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, who said he was “deeply concerned”.
EU Commission president JeanClaude Juncker said: “An attack on any of our member states is an attack on us all.”
The Aftonbladet newspaper reported the lorry had been hijacked from Swedish beermaker Spendrups earlier in the day and was then used to smash through bollards into the pedestrianised area, leaving a trail of blood and debris.
Witness Jan Granroth told Aftonbladet that “we stood inside a shoe store and heard something ... and then people started to scream.”
He added: “I looked out of the store and saw a big truck.”
Another witness quoted by the paper said: “When I came out, I saw a lorry standing there, with smoke coming from it, and there were loads of bits of cars and broken flower pots along the street.”
Mikael Anttila, a 49-year-old portfolio manager at SEB bank, said he saw several hundred people gathered on the street close to the shop, before they all started running suddenly.
He added: “Then a lot of police started coming. Heavy weapons, civilian police.”
Annevi Peterson described people lying dead and injured in the street, with blood everywhere. “I heard the noise, I heard the screams, I saw the people,” she told BBC News.
“There was, just outside the store, there was a dead dog, the owner screaming, there was a lady lying with a severed foot.
“There was blood everywhere, there were bodies on the ground everywhere.
“There was a sense of panic, people standing by their loved ones, but also people running away.”
The crash is close to the scene of a terror attack in 2010 when Taimour Abdulwahab, a Swedish citizen who lived in Luton, blew himself up.
Abdulwahab rigged an Audi car with explosives in the hope that the blast would drive people to Drottninggatan, a busy shopping street, where he was waiting to set off two more devices strapped to his chest and back.
The car bomb never went off and after setting fire to the Audi he was unable to detonate the other two explosives.