Sweden hit with wave of shootings, national police chief warns of unprecedented level of gang warfare

Sweden is witnessing an unprecedented wave of bloody gang warfare and shootings, Swedish National Police Commissioner Anders Thornberg said on Wednesday, following a week of deadly shootings in the Scandinavian country.

“There has been an unprecedented number of murders and bombings in Sweden recently,” Police Commissioner Anders Thornberg stressed at a press conference on Wednesday.

“Several boys aged between 13 and 15 have been killed, a criminal’s mother was murdered in her home, a young man was shot dead on his way to work in Uppsala,” the Swedish police chief said.

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“The people who order the murders are often found abroad,” Thornberg added.

There have been several shootings in Sweden this week: four in Uppsala, famous for its university, two of which were fatal, and two in Stockholm, where a 13-year-old boy was killed, according to Hungarian news outlet Magyar Hirlap.

In Sweden, the gang war for control of the arms and drug trade has been going on for years, and Sweden is no stranger to violence from its growing migrant population. The country experienced a record number of shootings and murders in 2022, leading the country to be labeled “the most dangerous country in Europe.”

According to the Swedish police, 90 bombings and 101 attempted bombings were recorded in 2022. As of Aug. 15, 2023, 109 bombings have been recorded in the country this year.

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“Segregation has gone so far that we have parallel societies in Sweden. We live in the same country, but different realities,” states Magdalena Andersson

Conflicts between criminal gangs have claimed the lives of many innocent people, Thornberg stressed.

“Citizens are afraid and insecurity is growing. Because of this, we have raised the terror threat level in Sweden,” the Swedish police chief added.

“We have arrested several people and confiscated weapons, including in Uppsala, where the situation is very serious,” Ulf Johansson, a police official in the city 70 kilometers north of the capital, underlined at a press conference on Wednesday.

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National Police Chief Anders Thornberg warned authorities simply do not have the resource to combat the rapidly increasing threat of gang warfare across the country

In 2022, 391 shootings were recorded in Sweden, 62 of which were fatal, compared to 45 people shot dead a year earlier.

Despite Sweden being run by a conservative government that promised to clamp down on crime from Sweden’s powerful criminal clans, which drive most of the violence, so far, the government has proven ineffective.