At least four dead after lorry rams pedestrians in Stockholm

Swedish prime minister says indications are that the incident in the capital was a terror attack.

Swedish emergency services at the scene where a truck crashed into the Ahlens department store at Drottninggatan in central Stockholm on April 7, 2017. Jonathan Nackstrand / AFP

STOCKHOLM // At least four people were killed and 15 injured when a hijacked lorry ploughed through a crowd outside a busy department store in central Stockholm on Friday, in what Sweden’s prime minister said was a terror attack.

The lorry driver then crashed into the upscale Ahlens store on the city’s Drottninggatan pedestrian street before escaping.

Authorities immediately evacuated the city’s nearby Central Station, which links regional trains with the Swedish capital’s subway system. All trains to and from the main station were halted and two large shopping malls were shut down after the attack at about 3pm.

“Sweden has been attacked. Everything points to a terror attack,” prime minister Stefan Lofven said in a nationally televised press conference.

Police confirmed the death toll and said they had arrested one person. They did not say whether it was the suspect whose photo was released earlier.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack, which was the latest in a string of assaults with vehicles in European cities.

The Swedish company Spendrups said the lorry used in the attack was stolen during a delivery stop. “Someone jumped into the truck and drove it away while the driver was unloading his delivery,” spokesman Marten Luth said.

Witnesses described scenes of terror and panic during the attack.

A man identified only as Dimitris told Sweden's Aftonbladet daily that the lorry came "out of nowhere".

“I couldn’t see if anyone was driving but it was out of control. I saw at least two people get run down. I ran as fast as I could away from there,” he said.

Another shopper, Leander Nordling, 66, was at Ahlens when he suddenly heard a loud bang.

"It sounded like a bomb exploding and smoke starting pouring in through the main entrance," he told Aftonbladet.

He and fellow shoppers took refuge in a supply cupboard in the store.

“After that the building was evacuated ... There were a lot of guards who took care of us outside and they urged us to leave the scene immediately,” Mr Nordling said.

Video footage taken from above showed scores of people streaming down the street in terror.

Swedish King Carl XVI Gustaf cut short a visit to Brazil and sent the royal family’s condolences to the families of the victims and those who were wounded.

In an attack last month that was claimed by ISIL, a man drove a car at high speed into pedestrians on London’s Westminster Bridge before fatally stabbing a policeman guarding the houses of parliament. A Romanian woman who fell off the bridge was taken off life support on Thursday, taking the death toll from the attack to five, while the attacker was shot dead at the scene by police.

ISIL also claimed responsibility for a lorry attack that killed 86 people in the French city of Nice on July 14 last year during Bastille Day celebrations, and another lorry attack that killed 12 people at a Christmas market in Berlin.

The border guard in neighbouring Finland stepped up security measures at airports and harbours following the Stockholm attack and Helsinki police tightened security in the Finnish capital.

Friday’s attack was carried out near where a suicide bomber killed himself and injured two others in December 2010.

Taimour Abdulwahab, a Swedish citizen who lived in Britain, had rigged a car with explosives in the hope the blast would drive people to Drottninggatan, where he planned to set off devices strapped to his chest and back. The car bomb never went off, and Abdulwahab died when one of his devices exploded among panicked Christmas shoppers.

* Associated Press and Agence France-Presse