UPPSALA: Three people were killed in a shooting in the Swedish city of Uppsala on Tuesday, and a murder investigation has been launched, police say.

Police said it was investigating the shooting as a murder and that it had no information that the incident was a terror or hate crime at this time.

“We have information that a person left the stage on an electric scooter,” a police spokesman said Reuters. “Whether this person is a perpetrator or a witness, or someone who has a connection to the incident, it is unclear at this time.”

Police said the victims should not yet be identified and refused to speculate on the motive for the killings.

Electric scooters have been used several times as a state of escape after gang conflict shootings in Sweden. Uppsala, approx. 40 minutes north of the capital, Stockholm, by car, has seen many gang -related shootings in the last decade, but usually outside the city center.

Swedish Minister of Justice Gunnar Strömmer said the Ministry of Justice was in close contact with the police and that it was closely to monitor the development of the case.

“A brutal act of violence has happened in Central Uppsala … This is at the same time as the whole of Uppsala has begun Walpurgis Night. What has happened is extremely serious,” Strömmer said in a statement.

Police previously said they had received calls from members of the public who heard shots at the city center and that emergency services had been rushed to the stage.

“Three people are confirmed dead after a shooting … The police are investigating the incident as a murder,” investigators said in a statement.

Witnesses told SVT that they had heard five shots and had seen people in the area run to take cover. Several Swedish media, including TT, reported that the shooting took place near or in a hairdressing salon.

Ten people were killed in February in the Swedish city of Örebro in the country’s deadliest ever mass shooting, where a 35-year-old unemployed loneliness opened fire on students and teachers at an adult education center.

Sweden has suffered from a wave of gang -related violence for more than a decade that has included an epidemic of pistold.

The Nordic country’s right -wing minority government came to power in 2022 on a promise to tackle gang -related violence. It has tightened laws and given several powers to the police, and after the Örebro shooting said it would try to tighten the pistol laws.