BBCIn the course of a grand, high-ceilinged church in Orebro, Sweden, Jacob Kasselia, a Syrian orthodox priest, seemed up in direction of the stained glass home windows above him, then again down at his arms. He adjusted the gold cross hanging from his neck.
“The police say this man acted alone,” the priest mentioned. “However this hate, it’s coming from someplace.”
A member of Kasselia’s congregation, 29-year-old Salim Iskef, was amongst these murdered in Orebro on Tuesday in Sweden’s first faculty capturing and the worst mass capturing within the nation’s historical past. The gunman killed 10 college students at an grownup studying centre after which himself.
Among the many lifeless are Syrians and Bosnians, in keeping with residents and the embassies of these international locations, however the police in Orebro haven’t given any particulars of the victims publicly.
Kasselia described Iskef as sort and considerate, eager to assist different members of the group. He got here to Sweden together with his mom and sister, the priest mentioned – refugees from Aleppo, the place his father was killed within the battle. Iskef was learning Swedish on the Risbergska faculty, the goal of Tuesday’s assault.
“He was merely man,” the priest mentioned. “He didn’t search for bother. He confirmed solely goodwill. He was a member of our group.”
The night time after the assault, Kasselia sat with Iskef’s household to console them.
Iskef was engaged and because of be married this summer season. His fiancee Kareen Elia, 24, was “very badly affected”, the priest mentioned, and was “going by a really troublesome, very darkish expertise”.
At a memorial service in Orebro on Thursday night time, Elia broke down in screams and tears and needed to be carried out of the church.
Within the days for the reason that capturing, there was a placing lack of understanding from the authorities. On Thursday night time, police had nonetheless not confirmed the identification of the gunman – extensively reported by Swedish media to be 35-year-old native Rickard Andersson – nor any particulars about his motive or the victims.
In a press release issued early on Tuesday, lower than 24 hours after the assault, police mentioned the shooter didn’t seem like motivated by any ideology. On Thursday, Anna Bergkvist, who’s main the police investigation, appeared to stroll the assertion again.
“Why they mentioned that, I can’t remark,” she advised the BBC. “We’re totally different motives and we are going to declare it when we now have it.”
Swedish police are normally cautious about naming suspects throughout an investigation, however the absence of official data has contributed to a sense of worry and uncertainty amongst Orebro’s immigrant communities over the previous few days.
“We’re getting all our data from the media and I do not know why,” mentioned Nour Afram, 36, who was contained in the Risbergska faculty when the assault started.
“We’d like extra data,” she mentioned. “We do not know why he did it, why did he goal this faculty? Was he sick or was it one thing else?”
Afram was ready to enter class when she heard folks screaming that there was a shooter – one thing so unbelievable to her she thought at first it was a prank.
“We began to run after which I heard the gunshots,” she mentioned. “One at first, then tak tak tak – possibly ten photographs. I used to be so scared I felt like my coronary heart stopped in my chest.”
Afram, who immigrated from Syria to Orebro as a toddler, mentioned she was afraid for the primary time to ship her three kids to high school in Sweden.
Zaki Aydin, a 50-year-old Syriac language trainer in Orebro, mentioned he was afraid for the primary time for his younger college students, who’re principally from the Center East. “We’re foreigners, we now have to watch out now,” he mentioned.
Aydin used to have the doorways of his classroom and the church constructing open when he taught. “Now we’re closing them,” he mentioned. “And yesterday I requested somebody to face exterior to stop anybody we did not know already from coming in.”
One of many pupils on the faculty, 18-year-old Gabriel, mentioned a “nightmare had come true” for Orebro.
“The issue is we now have no motive, solely hypothesis,” he mentioned. “Lots of people my age are frightened to go to high school, we really feel like Sweden has turn into like America. The stuff you see on tv have occurred right here.”
Within the absence of any official information concerning the motive, all that the residents right here in Orebro know is that the killer seems to have been a reclusive white Swedish man and that he focused a faculty with a big immigrant pupil base.
Tomas Poletti Lundstrom, an educational researcher in racism at Uppsala College, who occurs to stay just some minutes from the location of the assault and heard police helicopters fly over his house on Tuesday, mentioned Orebro was dealing with a “deeply horrible time”.
“You’ll be able to actually sense it in all places, it’s affecting everybody,” Lundstrom mentioned. “We do not know the motives of the shooter but, however we live in a really racist time and this can be a faculty for lots of immigrants.”
Shootings just like the one at Risbergska had been “the result of how our society seems for the time being, how our legislators speak, and the way we discuss each other”, he mentioned. “That is what occurs when politicians converse the best way they’re talking for the time being.”
On the cordoned off entrance to Risbergska faculty early on Thursday morning, folks had been stopping by to depart flowers, mild candles, or just to face and take within the scene. From the road, you possibly can clearly see the entrance door by which the killer was filmed showing to go from classroom to classroom with a rifle.
Amongst those that got here alone and stood for some time by the gathering of candles and flowers was the town’s mayor, John Johansson, who had made an official go to to the location the day earlier than alongside the prime minister and the king and queen however stopped there once more on his approach to work on Thursday to pay his respects.
“I hope that the police will discover conclusions quickly,” Johansson mentioned. “The town wants solutions, our society wants solutions, and the households of the victims have to know why this occurred.”
But it surely was not time to “speculate or rush forward”, he mentioned. “We don’t need to contribute to any false rumours, and so we hope the police will discover solutions as early as attainable.”
Tony Estroem, a salesman from Eskilstuna, about 80km from Orebro, additionally stopped by the varsity on Thursday morning. “This type of capturing, at a faculty, you examine it elsewhere however not in Sweden,” he mentioned.
“It seems to be a Swedish man, and maybe that’s higher than if it had been an immigrant accountable,” he added. “In fact it’s a horrible occasion both method, however we don’t need to add extra gas to the fireplace.”
Police have given out some restricted details about their investigation. They mentioned that about 130 officers responded to the capturing in complete, and that they had been met by an “inferno” within the faculty. They mentioned that they consider the gunman acted alone.
Relations, former faculty buddies and neighbours have advised Swedish media he had turn into a recluse lately and will have suffered with psychological points.
There have been complaints concerning the dealing with of the case. The Bosnian ambassador Bojan Sosic, who additionally visited the location of the capturing, discovered from residents {that a} Bosnian was among the many lifeless.
“I discover it odd, to say the least, that the police chooses to withhold data that pertains to international residents from respective embassies,” he mentioned.
Others, together with members of the Syrian group, mentioned they trusted the police had been doing the suitable factor and solely hoped to be taught extra quickly. Kasselia, the Syrian Orthodox priest, mentioned that the broader group “doesn’t know what the police are considering, however we belief that they’ve their very own plan”.
A whole lot of individuals got here to Kasselia’s church on Thursday night time from the Syrian, Turkish, Iraqi and different migrant communities. An image of Salim Iskef, one of many capturing’s victims, sat on an easel. Kids from the congregation sung hymns. Iskef’s household, sitting in a pew close to the entrance, had been consumed by grief.
It’s obscure why these types of assaults occur even when the motive is thought. With out it, it’s much more confounding. Just a few hours earlier than the memorial service started, Kasselia had been sitting in a pew in his empty church, attempting to make sense of it.
“Folks die, in fact. They turn into sick, they’ve some accident,” he mentioned. “However this, how can we perceive this? To be shot lifeless in a faculty. We couldn’t dream of this. We can’t even describe it. Why?”
There was some consolation in listening to from the police that the gunman acted alone, Kasselia mentioned. It left much less anxiousness of one other assault.
“However this man had one thing in his coronary heart, some form of hate, that he gathered from someplace,” the priest mentioned. “We can’t say there will not be others.”
Further reporting by Phelan Chatterjee. Images by Joel Gunter.