Several people were injured in an attack at a school in Fagersta, in central Sweden, on Friday afternoon. Police said they received a call about a case of ongoing deadly violence at a school in the town, and one person was detained.
A note on sourcing before the details: this account rests on a single report, by Al Jazeera, published while the incident was still developing. Every fact below comes from it. Figures in early reporting of an attack routinely change, and the number of people hurt had not been confirmed at the time of writing.
What is known
The school is Brinellskolan, in a town of roughly 12,000 people. It has around 450 students aged between 16 and 20, which makes it an upper secondary school rather than one attended by young children.
A police spokesman, Pelle Vamstad, said an alarm was received early on Friday afternoon and officers went to the scene. One person was taken into custody. Police have not released the age of the person detained, have not described a motive, and have not said whether the person detained is connected to the school.
Reporting described the weapon as a sword. Early descriptions of weapons in incidents of this kind are frequently revised, and no official confirmation of the type of weapon was available.
Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson said that "we do not yet know what lies behind the act, but we know that the police are working very intensively".
What is not known
Almost everything else. The number of people injured, how badly they were hurt, whether any of them were students or staff, how the attacker entered the building, and whether anyone else was involved are all unestablished.
There is a reason to be explicit about that rather than to fill the space. Attacks at schools generate an unusual volume of unverified claims in their first hours, from witnesses working with partial views and from accounts circulating faster than any investigation can proceed. A published number that turns out to be wrong is not a small error in a story of this kind: it is read by families trying to work out whether their child is among the injured.
Swedish police typically hold a press conference within hours of an incident of this severity and confirm casualty figures then. Until they do, the honest position is that several people were hurt, one person is in custody, and the rest is not yet known.
Swedish authorities are expected to give further details later.
