World News
Swedish police say a 17 year old student was killed in the Fagersta school attack
By Staff Writer | 23 August 2026
Three others were wounded, two of them seriously. Party leaders suspended campaigning for next month's election and went to the school together on Saturday.
The student killed in the attack at the Brinell School in Fagersta on Friday was a 17 year old girl, the Swedish police said on Saturday. The town lies north west of Stockholm and has a population of about 13,000. The attack took place in the afternoon, while classes were in session, days after the school had returned from the summer break.
The person killed in this incident is a young 17-year-old female. Her family has been informed
the Swedish police, in a statement published on their own website
The statement gave no other identifying detail. Three other people were wounded. The local authority for the county said the two who were seriously hurt are boys aged 12 and 17, one of whom needed emergency surgery. A third person, also under 18, was slightly injured and has been discharged from hospital.
The investigation
An 18 year old man, described by the school's principal as a student there, has been detained. The case is being investigated as murder and attempted murder. Police said they fired shots during Friday's operation and that the attacker was not hit, and that they have no reason to believe there were other attackers.
Officers have conducted around 80 interviews and expect to question close to 450 people, being almost all of the school's staff and students. Two addresses linked to the suspect in Fagersta have been searched.
No official information has been given on a motive. The local police chief, Tommy Alriksson, told reporters on Friday that investigators were following several lines of inquiry.
We are trying, of course, to remain as open-minded as possible
Tommy Alriksson, local police chief
The region went into a state of emergency on Friday and that had ended by Saturday.
An election put aside for a day
Around 70 people gathered at a memorial site prepared by the municipality on Saturday morning, with flowers and candles. The prime minister, Ulf Kristersson, went to the school with Magdalena Andersson, the leader of the main opposition party.
What must never happen has happened again
Ulf Kristersson, Prime Minister of Sweden
Sweden votes in a parliamentary election next month. Every party suspended its campaign events for the day, and the prime minister invited all party leaders to a meeting on the progress of the investigation.
His words carried the weight they did because this has happened before. In February 2025 a gunman killed 10 people at an adult education centre in Orebro, the worst mass shooting in the country's history, and the government responded with proposals for tighter gun laws. In March 2022 an 18 year old student killed two teachers at a school in Malmo. In 2015 a man attacked a school in Trollhattan and killed three people, in an attack the authorities said was racially motivated. Four attacks on places of education in eleven years is a pattern, and each time the answer has been sought in the weapon used. On Friday the weapon was a sword.