Uzbek man suspect in Swedish truck attack

The suspect behind the Stockholm truck attack had been facing deportation and had extremist sympathies, Swedish police say. “He was applying for a residence permit that was rejected in 2016”, police chief Jonas Hysing told reporters.

Police had been looking for him since the Swedish Migration Agency in December a year ago gave him four weeks to leave the country. “Bomb disposal officers carried out a controlled explosion overnight Saturday”, a Norwegian police statement said.

A Foreign Office spokesman said: “Stockholm police have confirmed that a British man was killed during the attack in Stockholm”.

Another 15 people were injured on Friday when a hijacked beer delivery truck barreled down a busy shopping street before crashing into a department store and catching fire.

Many Swedes were back at work for the first time since the attack, while the department store into which the truck slammed had already reopened.

Six people were taken into custody for interrogation on between Saturday and Sunday in several areas across Stockholm, police said, without adding further details.

Only yards from the scene, thousands of people gathered in the Sergels Torg square in a show of unity as heavily armed police stood guard and a police helicopter hovered overhead.

Police believe the Uzbek man is the one who drove the truck for the attack.

He laid flowers at the truck crash site, declaring Monday a national day of mourning, with a minute of silence at noon.

In Brussels, the Belga news agency said the Belgian woman had been reported missing before she was identified by her identity papers and later by DNA testing.

The suspect in the attack on Friday, a 39-year-old native of Uzbekistan who has been arrested, had been on authorities’ radar but was dismissed as a “marginal character”.

Minister Didier Reyders says “we have unfortunately have a lost a compatriot in the Stockholm attack”.

Meanwhile, a vigil is taking place this afternoon in Stockholm for those who were killed in the lorry attack.

The suspect was detained Friday in Marsta, about 25 miles north of Stockholm near the city’s main worldwide airport. It said two were in intensive care, four were seriously injured but the one child was not seriously hurt.

“We still can not rule out that more people are involved”.

“We grieve with the families that have lost their loved ones, near ones, but we’re also determined to continue to be an open society, a democratic society, and that is something I am totally confident that the Swedish people also feel”, Stefan Lofven said.

Lofven, Interior Minister Anders Ygeman and other government members have praised the police and the emergency services for their swift response to the attack.