Swedish police said Thursday the victims of the country's worst mass shooting were of multiple nationalities, as Syria and Bosnia said their citizens were among the dead.

Regional police chief Lars Wiren said officers arriving at the scene, where the gunman had killed 10 people before apparently killing himself, had described a scene resembling "an inferno".

Wiren said officers sent to the adult education centre in Orebro, west of Stockholm, were faced with "dead people, injured people, screams and smoke".

Releasing a timeline of the attack, police described how the first officers arrived at Campus Risbergska five minutes after police received several reports about a shooting at 12:33 pm (1133 GMT).

Shortly afterwards, officers reported smoke spreading through the building. They saw what they perceived to be "the shooter armed with a rifle-like weapon", said the police statement.

Within around 10 minutes of the first alert, a specialist first-response team had arrived and entered the building.

Wiren told reporters that officers got the impression that "the shooting started being directed at police when they entered........

© Al Monitor