The murderer is considered to be extremely dangerous and the police have reason to believe that he is mentally ill. The perpetrator apparently picked his victims randomly when he stabbed and killed 8-year-old Mohammed Ammouri, who was on his way to school, and a 56-year-old woman.

Sweden is in chock and about one hundred Swedish police officers are now hunting for a mentally ill man in his 20s.

The police have secured evidence at the scene of the crime, among other things, a so-called butterfly knife and a smaller piece of clothing. The murder weapon will be analysed Wednesday, and the police said they hope it will contain fingerprints which can be checked against the police’s computer database.

«We will catch the murderer soon, maybe within 24 hours,» said Christer Branthammer, police inspector, to Aftonbladet.

The police are concentrating their forces at several addresses in Linköping and locations where drug addicts normally meet, wrote the Swedish paper Aftonbladet.

«We are now checking all mentally ill men in their 20s who normally move around in this area,» said Pia Thevselius, police inspector, to the paper.

The police know that the murderer first attacked Anna-Lena Svensson, 56, and stabbed her with a knife. Seriously injured in the midriff, she collapsed in the street, and witnesses stated that they heard the little boy Mohammed Ammouri scream «Hjelp, help!» Suddenly, it was quiet.

An experienced police officer, who was among the first people on the crime scene, said he was shocked.

«I have never seen anything like it,» the police officer said.