Eight people have reportedly been injured in a mass stabbing in a small town near Sweden’s capital Stockholm. Police said a man in his 20s attacked people in the small town of Vetlanda, about 190 kilometres southeast of Goteborg, Sweden’s second-largest city. The man was shot by police, who said that the condition of those attacked and the perpetrator was not immediately known.
The events took place in downtown Vetlanda. Police said the man in his twenties had used a “sharp weapon,” while local media reported the man had brandished a knife. . They said the situation was under control and that nothing pointed to additional perpetrators. The assailant was taken to hospital after being shot in the leg by police when he was taken into custody, following the attack in the southern Swedish city in mid-afternoon. Police originally treated the incident as “attempted murder” but later changed it, in a statement, to a “suspected terrorist crime,” without giving further details. In Sweden, the intelligence services consider the terrorist threat to be high.
The Scandinavian country has been targeted twice by attacks in recent years. In April 2017, a radical Islamist drove a truck into crowds of shoppers on a busy street in central Stockholm, killing five people before crashing into a department store. He was arrested.
