Stockholm truck attack death toll rises to 5

pulse

April 28, 2017 2:23 PM

Police said the woman was being treated at a hospital in southern Sweden and died on Friday morning.

Three Swedes, including an 11-year-old girl, a Briton and a Belgian were killed in the Stockholm truck attack on April 7

The death toll from the Stockholm truck attack rose to five on Friday after a 60-year-old Swedish woman succumbed to her injuries, police said.

An Uzbek suspect has confessed to using a stolen truck to mow down pedestrians on a busy shopping street in central Stockholm on April 7 in a rampage similar to attacks in Nice, Berlin and London.

Three Swedes, including an 11-year-old girl, were among the dead along with one Briton and one Belgian. Fifteen others were injured.

Rakhmat Akilov, a 39-year-old Uzbek national who was arrested a few hours after the attack, has confessed to driving the truck.

Akilov ignored a deportation order and went underground after he was denied a residency permit in 2016.

Although no terror group has claimed responsibility, Swedish authorities said Akilov is known to have shown sympathies for jihadists groups, including the Islamic State.

He "confessed to a terrorist crime and accepted his custody detention," his lawyer Johan Eriksson told a custody hearing in Stockholm earlier this month.

The Uzbek police have accused Akilov of attempting to join the Islamic State in Syria via Turkey in 2015, according to Russian media.

An investigation into the truck attack is expected to take months as the authorities search for possible accomplices and try to determine the motives of the alleged attacker.

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