Norway bus hijacker was South Sudanese asylum seeker facing deportation: Police

A man accused of stabbing three people to death during on a bus in Norway on Monday was a South Sudanese asylum seeker facing deportation, reports said Tuesday.

Police said the man had been living at an asylum-seeker center in the town of Aardal in western Norway for several months. He was due to be flown to Oslo and then on to Spain on Tuesday to have his application for asylum assessed there. 

The man, whose name has not been released, is receiving treatment for knife wounds at a hospital in Bergen. Initial reports said the man was in his fifties, but the Associated Press reported Tuesday he was 31. 

He allegedly hijacked the Valdres Express bus shortly before 6 p.m. local time on a remote mountain road between Aardal and Tyin. The other people on board the long-distance bus, a 19-year-old woman and two men aged in their fifties, were stabbed to death. The motive for the attack is still not clear. 

It was the second deadly hijacking of a Valdres Express bus in the Scandinavian country.

In 2003, bus driver Audun Bøland, 39, and a passenger were killed when a 26-year-old man hijacked a Valdres Express bus in Fagernes.

More from GlobalPost: 3 killed in Norway bus hijacking