A gunman who killed 11 people, including himself, at an adult education centre in central Sweden may have been a student at the school, police said on Thursday, as they described chaotic scenes after the country's deadliest mass shooting as being like an "inferno".

The police responding to the attack encountered firing so intense that they struggled to tell how many gunmen were on the scene, an official said.

A gunman opened fire at an adult education center in the Swedish city of Örebro on Tuesday, killing at least 10 people in what the country’s prime minister called the “worst mass shooting in Swedish history.