A shootout at a Swedish hair salon Tuesday 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 (37 miles) 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.

Gang violence

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.

The shooting came a day before Uppsala holds the Valborg festival to mark the start of spring. While police sealed off the streets around the hair salon — and a drone flew overhead — they sought to reassure the huge number of visitors expected.

"People should not be afraid to come tomorrow," Klarin said.

"There are 100,000 to 150,000 people expected in Uppsala for Valborg tomorrow, and there are already a whole lot here today."

On 4 February, the country was rocked by its worst mass shooting when 35-year-old Rickard Andersson entered the Campus Risbergska adult education centre in the city of Orebro and shot dead 10 people before turning the gun on himself.

Sweden has struggled for years to rein in shootings and bombings between rival gangs. Earlier this month, two people were killed in a suspected gang fight in Gothenburg. A renowned rapper was shot dead in a gang battle in Gothenburg last year.

Perpetrators are often young teens who are hired as contract killers because they are under 15, the age of criminal responsibility in Sweden. The number of reported gang deaths fell in 2024 however.

In the country of 10.6 million people, 92 cases of deadly violence were recorded in 2024, 29 fewer than 2023, and the lowest level since 2014, according to official data.

There were 296 reported shooting cases in 2024, a 20 percent decrease from the year before, according to the Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention (Bra).

Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson's centre-right minority government, which is backed in parliament by the anti-immigration Sweden Democrats, came to power in 2022 with a vow to get tough on crime.