The noise, which started around 10.20am on Tuesday, was due to an issue near the train station.

“It’s an issue with the evacuation alarm at the railway depot which they haven’t been able to turn off,” a worker from the Syd emergency service line told local newspaper Sydsvenskan before the alarm stopped.

The alarm was successfully silenced just before 11am. On-duty emergency services officer Mats Streer told TT newswire that they had received a large number of calls from worried Malmö residents.

“It sounds a lot like a VMA (public warning) siren,” he said.

Sweden’s public warning siren, commonly referred to as Hesa Fredrik, is designed to warn residents of an attack or other emergency and is tested four times a year on the first Monday of March, June, September and December at three o’clock on the dot.

It was given its nickname, which translates to “hoarse Fredrik”, after a Swedish columnist at Dagens Nyheter in the 1930s, Oscar Fredrik Rydqvist, noted that it sounded like himself when he had a cold.

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