“It is a man in his fifties who has been shot outdoors. The perpetrator, or possibly perpetrators, fled the scene,” said county police head Börje Sjöholm to news agency TT.
Police received a call about a shooting around noon on Tuesday, and upon arriving at the site could confirm that a man in his fifties had been killed.
The man has been identified, but is not previously known to the police.
Witnesses have claimed they saw one or more suspects running from the site, but no one is yet sure if more than one shot was fired.
The man lay on the pavement outside an apartment building on Kantatgatan, covered with a tarpaulin.
People from the area had soon gathered outside the cordoned off perimeters to find out what had happened, reported the TT news agency from the site.
“I just live around here. I came out to see who has been shot this time,” one commented.
A woman, resident in the area, said she feels uneasy living there with her children.
“It’s chaos, it scares me. I’ve felt for a long time that I’ve been wanting to move away from here for my children’s sake,” she told TT.
Police dogs have been searching the closed off area over the afternoon, and cars are being investigated, but no one has yet been arrested.
Malmö police are now appointing a special committee to combat the obvious rise in violent crimes in the region.
“This is an exceptional situation with this many violent crimes,” said county police chief Eva Årestad during a press conference on Tuesday afternoon.
The Malmö police has already requested support from the National Bureau of Investigation (Rikskriminalen) and will ask for more, she continued.
The police believe that one of the reasons behind the rise in violent crime in Malmö is the widespread use of and trade in illegal firearms.
The police are planning to up their presence on Malmö streets and are appealing to witnesses to come forward if they have something to tell.
“Sometimes we feel people know more than they want to say. We are utterly dependent on people contacting us if they have information,” said Sjöholm.
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