‘It hit a pram ... demolished it’
Stockholm attacker targeted children as he drove down packed street, say witnesses Suspect arrested after ‘claiming responsibility’ for attack that killed four Echoes of atrocities in Nice and London as hijacked lorry is used as terror weapon
A SUSPECTED terrorist targeted young children deliberately as he drove a hijacked lorry into a crowded shopping street in Stockholm, witnesses claimed last night.
Infants’ buggies were sent “flying through the air”, one Swedish broadcaster reported, as the vehicle zigzagged along the pedestrianised Queen Street shopping district and embedded itself in the window of a department store.
“It swerved from side to side. It didn’t look out of control, it was trying to hit people,” a second witness, Glen Foran, an Australian tourist, told Reuters. “It hit people, it was terrible. It hit a pram with a kid in it, demolished it.”
A nationwide manhunt was launched and one person arrested after police issued a photograph of a lightly bearded man wearing a hooded top whom they wished to question in connection with the attack, which happened at around 2.45pm local time.
Aftonbladet newspaper reported a man with light injuries had been arrested after claiming he was responsible for carrying out the attack.
Last night it was reported that the suspected attacker was a 39-year-old father of four from Uzbekistan.
Some reports suggested he had previously posted jihadist propaganda on his Facebook page and had images of people injured in the explosion at the Boston Marathon in April 2013.
Jan Evensson of the Stockholm police said the man who was arrested looked like the person in the surveillance camera photo.
At least four people were killed and another 15 were injured, including children, authorities said. Nine of the injured were in a serious condition.
Stefan Löfven, Sweden’s prime minister, said everything indicated the incident was terrorism.
It happened less than two weeks after the Westminster Bridge attack, and stirred memories of the attacks in Nice and Berlin where Islamist sympathisers used lorries as weapons.
The attack also came less than two months after Donald Trump provoked a row with Sweden after suggesting that immigration had led to rising crime in the country.
Television footage showed hundreds of shoppers and office workers fleeing the scene after the lorry careered down the pedestrian precinct, killing a dog and crushing flower pots and litter bins. “We stood inside a shoe store and heard something ... and then people started to scream. I looked out of the store and saw a big truck,” Jan Granroth told Aftonbladet.
Another witness 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.”
Stockholm was under lockdown last night, with the metro and mainline trains shut down, as police fanned out across the city in pursuit of the suspect.
Stockholm city council announced it was opening public buildings for those stranded by the train and bus closures.
Mr Löfven later announced that Sweden had reinforced its borders with immediate effect.
The attack, which used a truck hijacked from a Swedish brewing company as it made its deliveries yesterday morning, drew condemnation and condolences from around the world.
Boris Johnson, the Foreign Secretary, said he was “deeply concerned”. “Britain’s thoughts are with the victims, their families and the whole of Sweden,” he added.
Sadiq Khan, the mayor of London, expressed his sympathies, saying his city shared a “steely determination with the people of Stockholm that we will never allow terrorists to succeed”. The European Union and countries across the continent added their voices of support, led by Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, and François Hollande, the French president, who expressed “outrage” at the attack in a statement from the Elysée Palace.
Jean-Claude Juncker, the president of the European Commission, said that Europe would face down terrorism.
THERE was nothing unusual about the scene on a bustling shopping street at the heart of Stockholm at quarter to three yesterday afternoon.
Families strolled along the pavement and tourists swapped gossip while shoppers in the upmarket Ahlens department store tried on new clothes. Within minutes, however, terror had struck Europe yet again.
It was 2.53pm local time when the first calls came in to police of a beer delivery truck smashing into the department store on Drottninggatan (Queen Street), leaving at least three people dead and eight more injured.
Pictures showed hundreds of people fleeing for their lives as the truck barrelled down a pedestrianised area, crushing at least three people and killing a dog before embedding itself in the shop’s front window.
Annevi Petersson, a photographer, had just stepped into a fitting room in one of the shops on the street when she heard the truck thunder past and dashed out to see what had happened.
“I heard the noise, I heard the screams, I saw the people,” she said. “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, and a sense of panic, people standing by their loved ones, but also people running away.”
The incident, which was treated as a terrorist attack immediately, came just over two weeks after five people were killed on Westminster Bridge by a car and four months after 12 people were killed when a truck ploughed into a Christmas market in Berlin.
Within three hours of the attack police released a grainy photograph of a suspect with a goatee beard wearing a green jacket, white shoes and a grey hooded top.
Graphic pictures posted on social media showed the lorry’s progress printed in bloodied tyre tracks on the street, the body of the dog cast off to one side. “People are lying mowed down along the whole route,” reported a second witness. “CPR is being given and rubbish bags are being used to cover the lifeless bodies.”
At a time when police across Europe are on hair-trigger alerts for terrorism, uniformed forces were deployed within minutes, many wearing gas masks, some with weapons drawn.
“I turned around and saw a big truck coming towards me. It swerved from side to side. It didn’t look out of control, it was trying to hit people,” Glen Foran, an Australian tourist in his 40s, told Reuters. “It hit a pram with a kid in it, demolished it. It took a long time for police to get here. I suppose from their view it was quick, but it felt like forever.”
As news spread, Stockholm was placed into lockdown, with police telling the public to avoid the city centre.
Trains in and out of the main station were suspended, as was the subway. Office workers were also ordered to shelter in place, as police blocked off entrances and exits across the city.
One office worker, JP Hanson spoke to the BBC from his office building close by where he was trapped with 40 other colleagues. “The mood is quite positive, obviously people are afraid – but I would say it’s a strong mood.”
Police said last night that they had arrested a suspect, but it was too early to ascribe a motive to the attack, which follows a pattern of trucks and vehicles being used as weapons – a method first advocated by al-Qaeda in 2010 and since used by Islamist-inspired attacks in Nice last July and Berlin in December.
Suspicion that the incident was deliberate was heightened by a statement from the owners of the truck, the Swedish brewery Spendrups, saying it had been hijacked earlier in the day.
“During a delivery to the restaurant Caliente someone jumped into the driver’s cabin and drove off with the car, while the driver was unloading,” a company spokesman told Sweden’s national TT news agency.
European leaders expressed their solidarity over the attack, the first in Sweden since Taimour Abdulwahab alAbdaly, an Iraqi-born Swede who was radicalised while living in Luton, detonated two bombs in central Stockholm in December 2010.
Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, said her government’s “thoughts are with the people in Stockholm”, while Jean-Claude Juncker, the European Commission president said that any attack on an EU member state was “an attack on us all”.
Vladimir Putin, the president of Russia, where a suicide bomber killed 13 people on a subway train in St Petersburg last Monday, sent a message of condolence to the Swedish king. “In our country, people know, and not by hearsay, about the atrocities of international terrorism,” he said.
‘I heard the noise, I heard the screams, I heard the people. There was a dead dog, the owner screaming. There was a lady lying with a severed foot’