Police probe online networks after Sweden school attack

Swedish police are investigating whether an 18-year-old man who attacked students at a school with a sword, killing one, was involved in online communities promoting school violence, a police source says.

The attacker struck at a secondary school in the central Swedish town of Fagersta, also severely injuring two teenage boys before being arrested by police.

The parents of a 17-year-old girl told local newspaper Fagersta-Posten that their daughter was killed in the attack.

Police are investigating whether a TikTok account that posted a picture of a sword 20 minutes before the assault belonged to the suspect, the source told Reuters.

According to the Dagens Nyheter newspaper, the image appeared to have been taken in a bathroom at the school.

Before it was taken down on Friday, the month-old account contained videos that referred to two episodes of mass violence in Sweden and to Norwegian mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik.

One of the videos referenced a 2015 attack in which a masked swordsman killed a teaching assistant and two boys at a school in Trollhattan, western Sweden, before being shot dead by police.

"The investigators are looking into various online communities which might have egged on the suspect to carry out the attack," the police source said.

Swedish Radio reported that the suspect was a former pupil of the school and had an access card to the site.

Several party leaders cancelled planned speeches on Saturday, pausing campaigning ahead of the September 13 election.

Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson and opposition leader Magdalena Andersson travelled to Fagersta to offer condolences to the bereaved family and visit the injured.

"What should never happen has happened again," Kristersson told reporters in Fagersta.

"Our thoughts go first and foremost to the families who have been incredibly hard hit by this," he said.

Sweden's worst mass shooting occurred in February 2025 at a school in the south-central city of Orebro, when a gunman killed 10 people before turning the gun on himself.