STOCKHOLM (Reuters) - A truck ploughed into a crowd on a shopping street and crashed into a department store in central Stockholm on Friday, killing four people and wounding 15 in what the prime minister said appeared to be a terrorist attack.

Police said they had detained one person in a northern Stockholm suburb after earlier circulating a picture of a man wearing a grey hoodie in connection with the investigation into the attack on Drottninggatan (Queen Street) using a hijacked beer truck.

Prosecutors ordered the man arrested on suspicion of terror crime through the act of murder. He was arrested on the highest level of suspicion in the Swedish legal system.

Swedish public service radio, citing a source at an unidentified German authority, reported that the suspect in custody was Uzbek. A police spokesperson declined to comment on the information.

Local authorities in the capital said early Saturday that six of the injured had been able to leave hospital while eight adults and one child remained hospitalized.

Swedish public broadcaster SVT reported police had detained a second man and that he had a connection to the previously arrested person, citing police sources. The police declined to comment on whether it had arrested any additional suspects.

“Our message will always be clear: you will not defeat us, you will not govern our lives, you will never, ever win,” Prime Minister Stefan Lofven, who had earlier described the assault as a terrorist attack, told a news conference.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility.

Police said security at Swedish borders had been heightened. They did not rule out the possibility other attackers were involved.

SWERVING

“I turned around and saw a big truck coming towards me. It swerved from side to side. It didn’t look out of control. It was trying to hit people,” Glen Foran, an Australian tourist in his 40s, told Reuters.

“It hit people; it was terrible. It hit a pram with a kid in it, demolished it,” he said.

“It took a long time for police to get here. I suppose from their view it was quick, but it felt like forever.”

The area of the attack in central Stockholm was evacuated, including the main rail station, and remained cordoned off late on Friday. All subway traffic was halted on police orders and government offices were closed.

A Reuters witness at the scene saw police officers put what appeared to be two bodies into body bags.

Bloody tyre tracks showed the path of the truck, which was stolen by a masked hijacker while making a beer delivery to a tapas bar further up Drottninggatan, according to Spendrups Brewery spokesman Marten Lyth.

“We were standing by the traffic lights at Drottninggatan and then we heard some screaming and saw a truck coming,” a witness who declined to be named told Reuters.

“Then it drove into a pillar at (department store) Ahlens City, where the hood started burning. When it stopped we saw a man lying under the tyre. It was terrible to see,” said the man, who saw the incident from his car.

Police said four people had died and 15 were injured. National news agency TT said those hurt included the delivery driver, who had tried to stop the hijack.

Several attacks in which trucks or cars have driven into crowds have taken place in Europe in the past year. Al Qaeda in 2010 urged its followers to use trucks as a weapon.

STOCKHOLM 2017-04-08 People laying flowers near the crime scene in central Stockholm the morning after a hijacked beer truck plowed into pedestrians on Drottninggatan and crashed into Ahlens department store on Friday, killing four people, injuring 15 others. TT News Agency/Jonas Ekstromer/via REUTERS

Islamic State claimed responsibility for an attack in Nice, France, last July, when a truck killed 86 people celebrating Bastille Day, and one in Berlin in December, when a truck smashed through a Christmas market, killing 12 people.

“Hijacking a truck, that has happened before,” Magnus Ranstorp, head of terrorism research at the Swedish Defence University, told Reuters.

“And this is a pretty cunning modus operandi. To drive to Ahlens and stop ... There is a way down to the subway just a few metres away from there, and then you ... can jump on any train you want and quickly disappear.”

#OPENSTOCKHOLM

Stockholmers opened up their homes and offered lifts to people who were unable to get home or needed a place to stay.

“Our thoughts are going out to those that were affected, and to their families,” Sweden’s King Carl Gustaf said in a statement, while European Union chief executive Jean-Claude Juncker said an attack on any of the bloc’s member states “is an attack on us all”.

The attack was the latest to hit the Nordic region after shootings in Danish capital Copenhagen in 2015 that killed three people and the 2011 bombing and shooting by far right extremist Anders Behring Breivik that killed 77 people in Norway.

Sweden has not seen a large-scale attack, although in December 2010 a failed suicide bombing killed the attacker only a few hundred yards from the site of Friday’s incident.

In February U.S. President Donald Trump falsely suggested there had been an immigration-related security incident in Sweden, to the bafflement of Swedes.

Swedish authorities raised the national security threat level to four on a scale of five in October 2010 but lowered the level to three, indicating a “raised threat”, in March 2016.

Police in Norway’s largest cities and at Oslo airport will carry weapons until further notice following the attack. Denmark has been on high alert since the February 2015 shootings. Traffic was restricted on the Oresund Bridge linking Denmark and Sweden at the request of Swedish police.

Slideshow (25 Images)

Neutral Sweden has not fought a war in more than 200 years, but its military has taken part in U.N. peacekeeping missions in a number of conflict zones in recent years, including Iraq, Mali and Afghanistan.

The Sapo security police said in its annual report it was impossible to say how big a risk there was that Sweden would be targeted like other European cities, but that, if so “it is most likely that it would be undertaken by a lone attacker”.</s>A vehicle has been driven onto a street full of people in Stockholm, Sweden, police said.

“Some kind of vehicle has been driven into a street full of pedestrians,” Swedish Police spokesman Lars Vilstrom told CNN Friday. “We have a lot of police officers on the scene. We don’t have numbers yet,” he said.

Police told Reuters there had been a number of injuries.</s>(CNN)A vehicle has been driven onto a street full of pedestrians in Stockholm, Sweden, police said.

“Some kind of vehicle has been driven into a street full of pedestrians,” Swedish Police spokesman Lars Vilstrom told CNN Friday.

“We have a lot of police officers on the scene. We don’t have numbers yet,” he said.</s>A vehicle has driven into people on a street in central Stockholm causing at least three deaths, police said on Friday.

Police said there were also a number of injured.</s>Sweden becomes the latest country to be attacked by terrorists using trucks and vehicles as deadly weapons. Similar attacks have taken place in London England, Nice France, Berlin Germany; and now Stockholm Sweden.

At least four people are dead and dozens injured as the terrorist hijacked and used a beer delivery truck to drive through the crowed street in Stockholm and plow over victims.

(Via CNN) […] The Swedish Security Service said the attack happened just before 3 p.m. local time. People were seen fleeing the area in panic. A beer truck was hijacked as it made a delivery nearby, according to the company that owned it. Eyewitnesses reported it being driven at speed along Drottninggatan (Queen Street) before it crashed into the front of a department store.

[…] “Sweden has been attacked,” Prime Minister Stefan Lofven told reporters “Everything indicates this is a terror attack.” Lofven said the government was doing everything possible to help the security services. “We are thinking about the victims — their families and friends — and those who were injured,” he said. The Prime Minister returned to the capital from the west of the country, his spokesman Erik Nises told CNN. “We will always do everything we can to protect Sweden, but we can’t guarantee that it won’t happen again,” Lofven told reporters later Friday. “If this is a terrorist attack, terrorists … want us to not live our lives normally,” he said. “But that is what we are going to do. So terrorists can never defeat Sweden. Never.” (read more)

UK Daily Mail has several articles and updates about the attack – SEE HERE</s>STOCKHOLM — At least two people have been killed after a vehicle was driven onto the busiest street in the center of Stockholm on Friday, according to the Swedish Security Police.

A large number of people were injured and intensive intelligence work is underway in order to identify the person or persons behind the attack, a spokesman said.

“Some kind of vehicle has been driven into a street full of pedestrians,” Swedish Police spokesman Lars Vilstrom said. “We have a lot of police officers on the scene. We don’t have numbers yet.” “Police are on location securing the area. People have been injured but we cannot give a number of injuries at this time,” a police spokesman said. Prime Minister Stefan Lofven has been informed about the situation in Stockholm and is returning to the capital from the west, spokesman Erik Nises said.</s>STOCKHOLM – A hijacked beer truck plowed into pedestrians at a central Stockholm department store on Friday, killing four people, wounding 15 others and sending screaming shoppers fleeing in panic in what Sweden’s prime minister called a terrorist attack.

A nationwide manhunt was launched and one person was arrested following the latest use of a vehicle as a weapon in Europe.

Nearby buildings were locked down for hours in the heart of the capital – including the country’s parliament – and the main train station and several large malls were evacuated.

“Sweden has been attacked,” Prime Minister Stefan Lofven said in a nationally televised press conference. “This indicates that it is an act of terror.”

Later Friday night, Lofven laid a bouquet of red roses and lit a candle near the site of the attack. Officials announced flags at government offices would fly at half-mast Saturday to honor the victims.

“The country is in a state of shock,” he said. “The aim of terrorism is to undermine democracy. But such a goal will never be achieved in Sweden.”

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack. Police arrested a man in Marsta, a northern Stockholm suburb close to the city’s international airport, as a possible suspect.

The stolen beer truck traveled for more than 500 yards along a main pedestrian street known as the Drottninggatan before it smashed into a crowd outside the upscale Ahlens department store about 3 p.m. It came to rest in the entrance to the building. TV footage showed smoke coming out of the store after the crash.

“People were screaming and running in all directions,” said Brandon Sekitto, who was in his car nearby. “(The truck) drove straight into the Ahlens entrance.”

“I saw the driver, a man in black who was light around the face,” Brandon told Swedish daily Dagens Nyheter. “Some women were screaming, `Run! Run!”‘

Late into the night, forensic experts in full white suits could be seen working on the truck, collecting evidence.

Although there was initial confusion on the number of victims, police told reporters in the evening that four people had been killed and 15 were wounded, nine of them seriously.

Authorities evacuated the city’s nearby Central Station, a hub for regional trains and the subway system. All trains to and from the main station were halted and several large shopping malls in Stockholm were shut down. Sweden’s national theater, Dramaten, canceled three performances Friday evening.

Jan Evensson of the Stockholm police told a news conference that the man who was arrested looked like the person depicted wearing a greenish hood in a surveillance camera photo that police released earlier. He said police were “particularly interested” in him.

“We continue to investigate at full force,” Evensson said, urging people not to go to central Stockholm on Friday night.

Stefan Hector of Sweden’s national police said the working hypothesis was that “this is an act of terror.”

“We will be working as long as necessary” to determine who was responsible, Stockholm police spokesman Lars Bystrom told The Associated Press.

The Swedish brewery Spendrups said one of its trucks had been hijacked just a few blocks from the crash scene earlier Friday.

“It is one of our delivery trucks. In connection with a delivery to a restaurant called Caliente, someone jumped into the truck and drove it away while the driver was unloading his delivery,” Spendrups spokesman Marten Luth told the Swedish news agency TT.

The beer company’s truck driver was not injured, he said.

The truck crash appeared to be the latest attack in Europe using a vehicle.

In an attack last month claimed by the Islamic State group, a man drove into a crowd on London’s Westminster Bridge, killing three people and injuring many others before stabbing a policeman to death. He was shot and killed by police. A fourth person, a woman thrown into the Thames by the force of the car attack, died Thursday.

The IS group also claimed responsibility for a truck attack that killed 86 people in Nice, France, in July 2016 during a Bastille Day festival, as well as another truck attack that killed 12 people at a Christmas market in Berlin.

Swedish King Carl XVI Gustaf cut short a visit to Brazil on Friday to return home and sent the royal family’s condolences to the families of the truck attack victims.

Lofven said his Social Democratic Party was still planning to hold its annual convention this weekend in Goteborg, Sweden’s second-largest city.

Condolences poured into Sweden. In neighboring Finland, President Sauli Niinisto said he was shocked by the “maniac act of terror,” adding “every terror attack is to be equally condemned. But it touches us deeply when such an attack takes place in our Nordic neighborhood.”

Danish Prime Minister Lars Loekke Rasmussen called the attack a cowardly attempt “to subdue us and the peaceful way we live in Scandinavia.”

Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo said the Eiffel Tower’s lights will be turned off from midnight Friday in homage. She expressed her “strong emotion” over “this new terrorist attack of immense cowardice.”

EU Council President Donald Tusk said in a tweet that “my heart is in Stockholm this afternoon. My thoughts are with the victims and their families and friends of today’s terrible attack.”

European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker said “one of Europe’s most vibrant and colorful cities appears to have been struck by those wishing it – and our very way of life – harm.”

Juncker also said “an attack on any of our (EU) member states is an attack on us all” and that Sweden can count on EU help.

In February, U.S. President Donald Trump suggested that Sweden could be the next European country to suffer the kind of extremist attacks that have devastated France, Belgium and Germany. Two days after his remarks, a riot broke out in predominantly immigrant suburb of Stockholm where police opened fire on rioters, a surprise to many Swedes who aren’t used to officers using guns.

Friday’s truck crash was near the site of a December 2010 attack in Stockholm in which Taimour Abdulwahab, a Swedish citizen who lived in Britain, detonated a suicide bomb, killing himself and injuring two others.

Abdulwahab had rigged a car with explosives in the hope the blast would drive people to Drottninggatan – the street hit Friday – where he would 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.

Olsen reported from Copenhagen, Denmark. Matti Huuhtanen and Jari Tanner in Helsinki, Finland, contributed.</s>"Accept our sincere condolences in connection with the tragic consequences of the terrorist act in Stockholm. Our country knows about the atrocities of international terrorism well. At this hard time, Russians mourn together with the people of Sweden," the statement said.

Putin also conveyed words of support to the families of those killed and wishes of a speedy recovery to those injured.

At least three people were killed and dozens were injured in Stockholm earlier on Friday when a truck rammed into a pedestrian crowd on Drottninggatan (Queen Street), a major pedestrian street in the capital, according to Swedish media reports.</s>Two people have been killed after a vehicle was driven onto the busiest street in the center of Stockholm, according to the Swedish Security Police.

“Some kind of vehicle has been driven into a street full of pedestrians,” Swedish Police spokesman Lars Vilstrom told CNN Friday.

“We have a lot of police officers on the scene. We don’t have numbers yet,” he said.

“Police are on location securing the area. People have been injured but we cannot give a number of injuries at this time,” a police spokesman told CNN by phone.

Prime Minister Stefan Lofven has been informed about the situation in Stockholm and is returning to the capital from the west right now, his spokesman Erik Nises told CNN.

Developing story – more to come</s>Sweden police officers work at the scene where a truck crashed into the Ahlens department store at Drottninggatan in central Stockholm. (AFP Photo)

Stockholm (Sweden): Flags flew at half-mast across Stockholm on Saturday as the city woke in mourning, a day after a truck attack that killed four as police said they had the suspected driver in custody.

A stolen beer truck ploughed into a crowd of people at the corner of the bustling Ahlens department store and the pedestrian street Drottninggatan on Friday afternoon, above ground from Stockholm's central subway station.

It was the latest in a string of similar assaults with vehicles in Europe, including in London, Berlin and the southern French city of Nice, all claimed by the so-called Islamic State (IS).

No one has claimed responsibility for the Stockholm attack, the third in Europe in two weeks after those in London and Saint Petersburg. Fifteen people were injured in the Stockholm attack, nine of whom remained in hospital on Saturday.

"Terror hits the heart of the city," Sweden's biggest broadsheet Dagens Nyheter headlined its front page above a picture of the truck with its front end smashed into the store.

Prime Minister Stefan Lofven said he had strengthened the country's border controls, as flags flew at half-mast at parliament, the royal palace, the government offices, and City Hall.

"Terrorists want us to be afraid, want us to change our behaviour, want us to not live our lives normally, but that is what we're going to do. So terrorists can never defeat Sweden, never," Lofven said.

Streets were empty on Saturday morning, apart from a heavy police presence. A small crowd milled by the security cordon around the scene, as passersby laid down flowers.

Suspected driver in custody

 Swedish police said early Saturday that a man arrested on "suspicion of a terrorist crime" was likely the truck driver. "We suspect that the man who was arrested is the perpetrator," Stockholm police spokesman Lars Bystrom told AFP.

The man was arrested "on suspicion of a terrorist crime through murder," Karin Rosander, spokeswoman at the Swedish Prosecution Authority, said.

The man was detained on Friday in Marsta, a suburb north of Stockholm. According to several media outlets, he is a 39-year-old of Uzbek origin and an IS supporter.

Prosecutors did not disclose his identity, but police said his appearance "matched the description" of a photo they released of a suspect wearing a dark hoodie and military green jacket.

"The Jihadist threat has long been minimised," Swedish daily Expressen wrote on Saturday, though there was no official confirmation that police were investigating that possibility.

'Terrifying'

 Witnesses described scenes of terror and panic on Friday. "A massive truck starts driving ... and mangles everything and just drives over exactly everything," eyewitness Rikard Gauffin told AFP.

"It was so terrible and there were bodies lying everywhere... it was really terrifying," he added. Passerby Hasan Sidi told Aftonbladet he saw two elderly women lying on the ground.

He said people at the scene urged him to help one of the women who was "bleeding to death". "One of them died... I don't know if the other one made it," Sidi said.

 The truck was towed away in the early hours of Saturday. Police cars and ambulances rapidly flooded the scene after the attack, as central streets and squares were blocked off amid fears that another attack could be imminent.

An attack on Stockholm was just a matter of time, the head of the Centre for Asymmetric Threat Studies at the Swedish National Defence College, Magnus Ranstorp, told AFP.

"It was pretty expected, the police and intelligence agency have practised for this several times the past year... We just didn't know when it was going to happen," he said.

Friday's attack was the latest in a string of similar assaults with vehicles in Europe, including in London, Berlin and the southern French city of Nice.

The deadliest came last year in France on the July 14 Bastille Day national holiday, when a man rammed a truck into a crowd in the Mediterranean resort of Nice, killing 86 people.

Last month, Khalid Masood, a 52-year-old convert to Islam known to British security services, killed five people when he drove a car at high speed into pedestrians on London's Westminster Bridge before launching a frenzied knife attack on a policeman guarding the parliament building.

And in December, a man hijacked a truck and slammed into shoppers at a Christmas market in Berlin, killing 12 people.

In 2014, IS called for attacks on citizens of Western countries and gave instructions on how they could be carried out without military equipment, using rocks or knives, or by running people over in vehicles.

Friday's attack was the second terror attack in Stockholm. In December 2010, a suicide bomber blew himself up, also on the Drottninggatan pedestrian street, lightly injuring several passersby.
A vehicle is driven into a group of people on a street in Stockholm, Sweden, killing four people.