STOCKHOLM - A shootout at a Swedish hair salon left at least three people dead, police and media said, amid heightened nerves over gun violence in the Scandinavian nation.
Gunfire erupted in the centre of Uppsala a day before a spring festival which draws more than 100,000 people to the city, some 60 kilometres north of Stockholm.
Police, who confirmed three dead, said the attack was staged by a masked gunman. Media reports said at least one suspect escaped on an electric scooter after the early evening shootout.
Justice Minister Gunnar Strommer called the killings "extremely serious" but police would not say if it was the latest episode in a long-running gang war. Sweden is also recovering from its worst mass shooting in February.
"We have three people confirmed dead, but we have not confirmed their identities," police spokesman Magnus Jansson Klarin told AFP.
"We received reports of a masked person on an electric scooter, we are looking into those reports," he said, adding that door-to-door inquiries were being carried out around the scene of the shooting.
Swedish media said witnesses heard several shots at a hair salon in the centre of the city.
The SVT public broadcaster said one of the dead had been a suspect in an investigation into a planned attack against a relative of a gang leader, Ismail Abdo.
"It's normally a quiet neighbourhood, I do my shopping here every day," Elias Sundgren, a student at the local university, told AFP.
Uppsala's mayor Erik Pelling told AFP he was "shocked and dismayed" by events.
"I am also angry that it could happen," he added.
"We are forced to live with these crimes. I am frustrated that we have not been able to tackle this problem more effectively," Pelling said.