Swedish police have arrested a teen suspect after three youths aged from 15 to 20 were killed in a shooting at a hair salon, authorities said Wednesday, amid rising concern over gang violence in the Scandinavian nation.
Tuesday's shooting took place in broad daylight a day before the Valborg spring festival in the university city of Uppsala, which draws more than 100,000 people for bonfires and celebrations, many of them students.
"One person has been arrested suspected of murder," police commander Erik Akerlund told reporters Wednesday, with prosecutors saying the suspect was 16.
Akerlund said the identities of the victims had not been "100%" confirmed, the BBC reported.
Police officers are seen at a crime scene in central Uppsala, Sweden on April 30, 2025. Three people were killed on April 29, 2025 in a shooting in Uppsala, a city north of Sweden's capital Stockholm, police said.
FREDRIK SANDBERG/TT NEWS AGENCY/AFP via Getty Images
Swedish media reported that at least one of the dead had connections to a crime gang, though police would not confirm those reports.
"That is something we are obviously looking into, but we don't want to commit ourselves to only that" possibility, Uppsala police spokesman Stefan Larsson told AFP.
Uppsala is home base for Sweden's two most notorious gang leaders, Ismael Abdo and Rawa Majid, who are both believed to be orchestrating operations from abroad. A new, violent chapter in Sweden's gang wars began when Abdo's mother was murdered in 2023 at her home in Uppsala, the BBC reported.
The Scandinavian country has struggled for years to rein in shootings and bombings between rival gangs.
Akerlund said several people "considered of interest in the investigation" had been brought in for questioning.
He said police had obtained camera footage from the scene and "secured a lot of evidence".
Justice Minister Gunnar Strommer has called the killings "extremely serious", while Uppsala's mayor Erik Pelling told AFP he was "shocked and dismayed" by events.
"I am also angry that it could happen," he added.
"We are forced to live with these crimes. I am frustrated that we have not been able to tackle this problem more effectively," Pelling said.
Sweden has struggled for years to rein in gang shootings and bombings.
On Sunday, a mother and her young child were severely injured when a homemade bomb tore through their home, media reported, adding that a neighbor suspected of ties to criminal gangs had been the real target.
Earlier this month, two people were killed in a suspected gang fight in Gothenburg, while a renowned rapper was shot dead in a gang battle in the city last year.
Perpetrators are often young teens hired as contract killers because they are under 15, the age of criminal responsibility in Sweden.
The Swedish government has proposed new legislation that would allow police to wiretap children under the age of 15 in an attempt to curb the violence, according to the BBC.
In the country of 10.6 million people, 92 killings were recorded in 2024, 29 fewer than 2023 -- the lowest level since 2014, according to official data.
There were also 296 reported shootings, down a fifth on the year before, according to the Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention.
Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson's centre-right minority government, which is backed in parliament by the anti-immigration Sweden Democrats, came to power in 2022 with a vow to get tough on crime.
Sweden was also rocked by its worst mass shooting in February when 35-year-old Rickard Andersson entered the Campus Risbergska adult education center in the city of Orebro and shot dead 10 people before turning the gun on himself.
After that shooting, the government and the right-wing Sweden Democrats party said that they planned to move forward with proposals to tighten gun laws, including restricting access to semi-automatic weapons such as the AR-15, Swedish news agency TT reported.
Currently, Sweden's laws already involve strict licensing for all firearm ownership, with applications made directly to the national police force and prospective applicants required to demonstrate that a weapon it will be used for an acceptable purpose, such as hunting or target shooting, and not be misused.
Applicants must also submit previously obtained hunting or target shooting certificates. Hunting certificates require people to pass a training course, while target shooters must be certified as active and experienced members of clubs.
In a country of roughly 10.5 million people, there were just over 660,000 registered gun owners at the beginning of 2024, according to the Swedish news agency TT. Those registered owners had some 2 million guns, objects that are considered firearms and weapon parts that require a permit.
TT reported that 1.6 million of those guns are registered for hunting, and another 176,000 for target-shooting.