HELSINKI – Swedish police said they fired warning shots during a riot in an eastern city to disperse protesters angry over demonstrations in recent days by a Danish anti-Islam group in Sweden. Three people were slightly injured during the clashes.

A crowd of about 150 people threw stones at police and police vehicles and set fire to cars. Police said they responded by firing warning shots and “three people appear to have been hit by ricochets” and were admitted to a hospital in Norrköping, which has about 130,000 inhabitants and is located about 160 kilometers (100 miles) southwest of Stockholm.

“All three injured are arrested on suspicion of crime,” police said, adding that none of them had serious injuries.

A photographer for the Swedish news agency TT at the scene reported that several riot police were seen carrying an injured man to an ambulance.

The riot broke out after the Danish right-wing extremist politician Rasmus Paludan’s meetings and planned Koran burning in various Swedish cities and towns since Thursday.

Paludan and his Stram Kurs party had planned a demonstration in Norrköping on Sunday but he never showed up in the city, Swedish media reported. Riots were also reported in the nearby city of Linköping.

Paludan said on the party’s Facebook page that he decided to cancel Sunday’s demonstrations in the two places because the Swedish authorities in the region have “shown that they are completely incapable of protecting themselves and me. If I was seriously injured or killed due to the inadequacy of the police authority, then it would be very sad for Swedes, Danes and other northerners. “

In addition to Norrköping and Linköping, unrest and violent clashes have been reported in Stockholm, Örebro, Landskrona and Malmö, Sweden’s third largest city, in the last three days.

On Friday night, violent clashes broke out between protesters and counter-protesters in the central city of Örebro before Paludan’s plan to burn a Koran there, which left 12 policemen injured and four police cars set on fire.

In Landskrona, southern Sweden, a few hundred most young people threw stones and set fire to cars, tires and dustbins. They also erected a barrier that blocked traffic on Saturday night. Similar unrest took place in nearby Malmö, where a city bus was set on fire late on Saturday.

Paludan, a Danish lawyer who also has Swedish citizenship, started Stram Kurs, or “Hard Line” in 2017. The party’s website, which runs an anti-immigration and anti-Islam agenda, says “Stram Kurs is the most patriotic political party in Denmark. “

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