As usual, the earliest news reports on yesterday’s terrorist attack in Stockholm were partly right and partly wrong. This is what we think we know as of this morning:
* Four people were killed and 15 were injured, ten of whom are hospitalized.
* At least two people have been arrested so far. The first, believed to be the driver of the stolen truck that careened down a pedestrian street and crashed into a mall, is described as a 39-year-old from Uzbekistan. He was known to Swedish authorities as a possible terrorist, and had jihadi propaganda on his Facebook page. But Swedish authorities say that the information they had on him was “marginal,” and that they investigated and “found no connections to extremism.” The authorities won’t say whether the Uzbek was a legal resident or how long he had been in Sweden.
* Information on whether others were involved in the attack is contradictory. An early report that three men jumped out of the truck and started shooting into the crowd was apparently false. A man was arrested and led away from the scene shortly after the attack, but it is unclear what his connection to the incident was, if any. Reuters says that a second man (seemingly not the one who was apprehended at the scene, or the Uzbek) has been arrested in a northern Stockholm suburb. This second man “resembled the picture and description of a man that police went public with after the truck attack.”
I think they mean this picture, but it isn’t clear (to me, anyway) whether this is a photo of the Uzbek or the second person arrested in a northern suburb:
* Swedish police say that “a device which did not belong there,” presumably a home-made bomb or incendiary device of some sort, was found in the truck.
* Several videos of the attack have emerged. This one shows people fleeing on the pedestrian street, and the truck barreling past a store:
This one shows the aftermath of the attack, possibly including a fleeing terrorist as well as police:
This one mostly shows firefighters extinguishing a fire that broke out in the truck, either as a result of the crash or possibly due to an incendiary device:
Most likely there are other videos, too.
UPDATE: Reports from Sweden indicate that the Uzbek terrorist was denied asylum in January but lingered in Sweden anyway. He also is said to have a “double identity.” This is from Sweden, using an internet translation program:
According to a credible source the 39-year-old Uzbek citizen had a double identity, something that is typical of terrorists.
According to the source, the man having been rejected for asylum in January this year, but have thus been able to linger in the country as “paperless”.
He should be on Facebook have expressed sympathy for the Muslim terror group Islamic State.
Further, according to the source, paraphernalia found in the truck that is suspected to be a type of IED (from the English improvised explosive device). It is believed that it was the same man who also carried out the attack.
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