Sweden’s leader seeks military help amid unprecedented wave of deadly gang violence

Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson vowed to defeat criminal gangs with the military’s help after a surge of violence that has killed a growing number of children and innocent victims.

Kristersson was expected to meet on Friday with the national chief of police and the commander in chief of the military “to see how the armed forces can help the police fight the gangs”.

The Scandinavian country has in recent years been in the grip of a bloody conflict between gangs fighting over arms and drug trafficking, which has escalated over vendettas between the gangs.

Residential blocks and homes across the country are frequently rocked by explosions, while shootings, once limited to disadvantaged areas, have become regular occurrences in public places in the usually tranquil, wealthy country.

“We are going to hunt down the gangs. We are going to defeat the gangs,” Kristersson said in a televised address to the nation on Thursday evening, after three people were killed overnight on Wednesday.

An 18-year-old man was shot dead at a crowded football pitch early Wednesday evening in a well-off Stockholm suburb, police said.

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A second shooting took place around midnight in another Stockholm suburb, injuring two people, one of whom later died, police said, adding that three suspects had been arrested in that case.

Several hours later, an explosion near the university town of Uppsala, 70km north of Stockholm, damaged five homes and killed a 25-year-old woman with no known connection to the gangs, according to police.

The surge in killings has shocked Swedes.

“Crime has reached unprecedented levels. The situation is very serious in Uppsala, and in the rest of the country,” Uppsala police official Catarina Bowall said.

According to a tally by Swedish public television SVT, 12 people have been killed in shootings and explosions in September, the deadliest month in the past four years.

One of the dead was a 13-year-old boy whose body was found dumped in a wooded area. Prosecutors said they believed he was a victim of the gang violence.

“An increasing number of children and completely innocent people are affected by this extreme violence,” Kristersson said.

“Sweden has never seen anything like this. No other country in Europe is seeing anything like this.”

He said serious organised crime had risen over the past decade “due to naivite”.

“An irresponsible immigration policy and failed integration led us here,” the conservative leader said.

Sweden long stood out in Europe along with Germany for having liberal immigration policies and welcoming hundreds of thousands of asylum seekers from the Middle East and Africa.

Sweden has since sharply restricted migration levels, citing rising crime levels and other social problems.

“Swedish legislation was not designed for gang wars and child soldiers. But we’re changing that now,” Kristersson said.

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He noted new legislation entering into force in the coming days enabling police to wiretap gangs, as well as plans for body searches in some areas, harsher sentences for repeat offenders and double sentences for certain crimes.

“We’ll put them on trial. If they are Swedish citizens they will be locked away with long prison sentences, and if they are foreigners they will be deported,” he said.

“We are going to deport foreigners who move in criminal gang circles even if they haven’t committed a crime,” he said.

He said Sweden also needed to introduce surveillance cameras in public places and build special prisons for teenage criminals.

In 2022, Sweden registered 391 shootings, 62 of which were fatal.

Additional reporting by Associated Press