Swedish police detain two men over Stockholm truck attack

Swedish police detained two men over Friday’s deadly truck attack in Stockholm’s downtown Drottninggatan shopping street, TASS reports.

At around 3pm local time, a hijacked beer truck drove 550 meters down the busy pedestrian street and smashed into the Ahlens department store, leaving at least four people dead and more than a dozen injured, according to police estimates. Live television footage showed smoke coming out of the department store, and several people were rushed away in ambulances. The police has started “a preliminary investigation of suspected terrorist crimes.”

Shortly after the attack, police released an image of a hooded man wearing a green jacket whom they searched in connection with the attack. However, the police stopped short of formally identifying him as a suspect.

Sweden’s official TT news agency quoted a police source as saying that “one person was detained for a certain role in the attack.”

According to the Aftonbladet newspaper, a 39-year-old man of the Uzbek descent was detained by a police patrol in the district of Marsta about 25 miles north of the Swedish capital. The man was reportedly registered in another suburb of Stockholm and, according to one of his acquaintances, was employed as a construction worker and had four children.