Schools shut in Swedish town after ‘threat’: officials

Authorities ordered 16 public schools to shut in the central Swedish town of Borlange on Wednesday after receiving reports of a threat of violence, officials said.

Newspaper Aftonbladet reported the threat involved a “school shooting,” which had also been circulated on social media. Police declined to comment on the report.

“The decision is a precautionary measure due to a potential threat of violence against school activities,” the Borlange municipality said in a statement.

Some private schools also kept their doors closed after being told of the threat.

Jorgen Olsson, the city’s administrative manager, told a press conference that students in the city had received information on Monday that “raises concern”.

“Late on Tuesday evening, this information reaches municipal employees,” Olsson told reporters, without specifying the nature of the information.

The municipality listed 16 pre-schools, elementary and secondary schools that were to remain shut for the day. A number of private schools decided independently to close.

Speaking alongside Olsson, Jimmy Spolander, a police official, said they would not give details other than saying that there was a “threat against school operations.”

Spolander also told reporters that there was no suspect at the time.

Police said in a statement, that it had opened “a preliminary investigation into serious unlawful threats against a group,” adding that it was too early to say “whether the threat has any substance or not”

Borlange, a town of about 45,000 people, is some 200 kilometres (125 miles) north of Stockholm.

According to public broadcaster SVT, the school closure affected some 3,000 children.

Attacks on schools are relatively rare in Sweden.

In February 2025, a 35-year-old gunman killed 10 people at an adult education centre in Orebro — Sweden’s worst mass shooting — which police said was motivated by the killer’s wish to end his life because of financial and psychological woes.

In March 2022, an 18-year-old student stabbed two teachers to death at a secondary school in the southern city of Malmo.

And in October 2015, three people were killed in a racially motivated attack at a school in the western town of Trollhattan by a sword-wielding assailant who was killed by police.

ANEWS wp:paragraph