It was about 12:30 p.m. on a gray Tuesday in Orebro, Sweden, when gunfire erupted at an adult education center, with students and teachers in class. Minutes later, as an alarm wailed, the police charged into the center, Campus Risbergska, where they encountered a chaotic, smoke-filled scene. It would be hours before they gave an all-clear.
“An inferno. Dead people. Injured people. Screams and smoke,” Lars Wiren, Orebro’s police chief, said Thursday at a news conference as he described the scene.
When officers entered the school on Tuesday, it was filled with smoke from pyrotechnics, Mr. Wiren said. The police came under a hail of gunfire so intense that officers could not tell how many shooters were on the scene, he added. Through the smoke, officers saw a man approaching them and carrying what appeared to be a rifle.
The man continued to shoot, emptying several magazines of ammunition. In the chaos, none of the 130 police officers chose to return fire, the police chief said.
“You have to respect the situation. There’s panic among the students, the teachers,” Mr. Wiren said. “There’s smoke. The circumstances must be right in order to fire.”
After about an hour, officers later found the gunman among the dead. Near his body were three weapons, including the rifle. Scattered nearby were at least 10 empty magazines and unused ammunition, Mr. Wiren said.
Police officers fanned out across the four-acre campus, searching for victims and possibly more perpetrators in an operation that lasted over three hours, according to a police timeline of events.
In one of the classrooms, Hellen Werme and other students hid for at least two hours under tables and hospital beds used for training. As soon as shots rang out, they locked the door and hid on the far side of the room, she said. At one point, they heard the gunman pass by.
“We were very quiet. He was close,” Ms. Werme, 35, recalled a day later. “I could hear his steps, but then the shots were further and further away.”
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