Swedish police have shot and seriously wounded an armed man outside the Royal Palace in central Stockholm.
The shooting happened on October 6 at Lejonbacken, the open slope that runs up to the northern entrance of the palace in the capital’s Gamla Stan old town.
Officers said the man had been behaving aggressively while carrying a weapon, which they did not identify. The force gave its account on social media shortly after the operation.
The man was taken to a hospital in Stockholm with serious injuries. Police said his life was not in danger.
Police did not say whether anyone else had been hurt and gave no indication of a motive. They had not released the man’s identity or age.
Lejonbacken, named after the bronze lions that flank it, faces the Norrbro bridge and stands a short walk from the Riksdag, the Swedish parliament building.
The palace is the official residence of King Carl XVI Gustaf and one of Stockholm’s most visited landmarks, drawing large numbers of tourists to its guided tours and daily changing of the guard. The royal family has lived at Drottningholm, west of the city, since 1981.
Gamla Stan, the medieval core of the capital, is among the busiest parts of Stockholm in daylight hours and sits between the government quarter and the waterfront.
Shootings by Swedish officers remain uncommon. Police fire at a person about 15 times a year across the country, according to the national police authority, with warning shots used on a similar number of occasions.
Every use of a service weapon is examined by the separate unit that investigates suspected offences by officers, a review that is routine and not in itself an indication of wrongdoing.
Violent crime has dominated Sweden’s domestic debate for several years, with the government reaching for new measures against gang recruitment, among them a plan to fit children considered at risk with electronic tags.
Sweden has the highest rate of gun deaths per head of population in the European Union, and the spread of Swedish gang networks into Denmark, Norway and Finland has pushed the Nordic countries into closer police cooperation.
Nothing released so far links the man shot at Lejonbacken to organised crime, and police have described the incident only as an operation against an armed individual.
