Criminal motive suspected as explosives 16 in Sweden – Newspaper
STOCKHOLM: Criminal activity may have been behind an explosion that broke through an apartment building in Gothenburg early on Tuesday, the authorities say, with 16 people injured, four of them seriously injured.
Rescue workers said the blast did not look like an accident in a country hit by masses of actual or attempted bombings linked to violent criminal gangs in recent years. Ambulances, fire engines and rescue workers swarmed the site on Tuesday morning when thick smoke rose from the building, TV images showed.
“It is clear that a crime cannot be ruled out,” said Interior Minister Mikael Damberg at a joint press conference with Prime Minister Stefan Lofven.
Lofven, whose government has been criticized in recent years for not emptying rising gang crime, told reporters he did not want to “speculate” on the origin of the explosion.
“Everyone should know that society is always stronger than crime,” he told the press conference.
According to the regional newspaper Goteborgs Posten, a police officer who recently testified in a major gang trial in Sweden’s second city lives in the building.
Published in Dawn, September 29, 2021