“He sustained one shot wound to the head and several to the chest,” said Peter Martinsson of the local police in Malmö to newspaper Aftonbladet earlier on Sunday.

Police had received a call half an hour past midnight, in the first hour of 2012.

A number of patrol cars made their way to Rosengård where they found a young boy shot several times.

The boy was taken to hospital where medical staff at the intensive care unit at Skåne University Hospital worked hard to save his life.

At one point during the night police said that the boy had died, but the information was later changed and officers reported that he was still hanging on, although his condition was said to be critical.

However, in the early evening on Sunday, the boy died from his injuries, despite the efforts of medical staff to save his life.

The boy was previously known to the police, although not for any serious offences.

“That’s just a few light misdemeanors. We can’t see at present how any of those would be connected to what has happened,” Martinsson said to the paper.

The area where the shooting occurred was quickly cordoned off, and the forensic investigation has thus far resulted in the find of empty cartridges.

No one has yet been arrested for the shooting and it isn’t known if there were any witnesses to the incident, but several people have been questioned over night, according to police.

Officers spent New Year’s Day mapping out the boy’s movements prior to the incident, where he went and who he saw.

The incident has been classified as attempted murder, or alternatively as manslaughter.