Massive manhunt for killer
2003-09-11 16:23
Stockholm - Swedish police were frantically searching for the killer of Foreign Minister Anna Lindh on Thursday, a day after an unidentified man fatally stabbed her in a Stockholm department store and got away on foot.
Hundreds of police officers across the country have been called in to work on the case.
"We are using all of our resources to resolve this," a Swedish police spokesperson said.
Stockholm had been teeming with police presence immediately after Wednesday's attack as helicopters roared overheard amid huge deployments on the streets.
But on Thursday only intermittent wails of police sirens suggested that police were feverishly hunting the assailant.
Police said they were following up a number of leads, and would rule out no possibilities for now.
Some unconfirmed reports indicated that the tragic attack may have been a purse-snatching gone horribly awry.
The assailant "appeared collected at the time of his actions," Stockholm police spokesperson Bjoern Pihlblad was quoted in the media as saying.
"We think this indicates that he knew what he was doing. He did not pull out a knife in a sudden act of madness," he said.
A nationwide alert has been issued for the suspect, a man described as being 1.80m tall and wearing a military camouflage jacket and a baseball cap.
The murder weapon and the baseball cap were found near the scene, and DNA testing was being conducted on those items.
Lindh, a 46-year-old mother of two, was running a mid-afternoon errand at NK, Stockholm's chic department store, when the man suddenly appeared in front of her and plunged a knife into her stomach.
She received injuries to the chest, abdomen and arm, and was rushed to the Karolinska Hospital on the outskirts of Stockholm where she was immediately operated on for massive internal bleeding, in particular of the liver.
Doctors fought throughout the night to save her life, but she died at 04:29.
The attack came just days ahead of Sweden's referendum on the euro on Sunday, in which Lindh was one of the frontfigures for the "yes" camp.
Investigators did not want to comment on whether the murder was linked to the referendum.
Persson said he hoped the investigation would be "resolved swiftly", adding that the "crime against her also hurts the society we have built and live in, it damages the trust in society."
- SAPA