STOCKHOLM: Three people were killed and three others injured in a gang shooting in the southern Swedish city of Malmo, plagued by rival criminal gangs, police said Tuesday.
While shootings that lead to multiple deaths remain rare in Sweden, the normally tranquil nation has seen a rise in violent crime in recent years, a phenomenon that has preoccupied voters ahead of a September 9 general election.
Immigration, security and crime — primarily in Sweden’s disadvantaged suburbs — are among the main themes of the election campaign.
The ruling Social Democrats have seen their support in opinion polls slump in recent months, while the ratings of the populist, anti-immigration Sweden Democrats have soared.
Witnesses to Monday’s shooting said the victims were sprayed with around 15 to 20 bullets as they walked out of an Internet cafe, not far from a police station, at around 8:00 p.m. (1800 GMT).
At least one of the attackers fired an automatic weapon, according to witnesses cited in the media, though police refused to comment on the reports.
Police said the victims were all known criminals.
“The people involved are considered criminal gang members who are involved in organized crime in Malmo,” the city’s police chief Stefan Sinteus said at a press conference on Tuesday.
The three dead were aged 19, 27 and 29, while the injured were 21, 30 and 32. Their identities have not been disclosed.
No suspects have been identified or arrested yet.
The Scandinavian country has a reputation for being safe, enjoying relatively low levels of crime in general.
But in the disadvantaged suburbs of the three biggest cities Stockholm, Gothenburg and Malmo, violent crime has been on the rise in recent years.
Authorities have attributed the increase to rival gangs fighting over control of the drug and prostitution markets, and random settling of scores between loose gangs of youths who see no prospects in life.
Last year, 10 people were killed by gunfire in Malmo, a deeply segregated industrial town of 312,000 where more than 40 percent are of foreign origin.
In all of Sweden, more than 40 people were killed by gunfire in 2017, and 320 acts of violence with a firearm were registered, primarily in the three biggest cities, according to police statistics.
Police said Tuesday Malmo was home to three or four criminal gangs.
“There are a number of gang conflicts that we consider heated and this is one of them. But we had no indication this was going to happen,” Sinteus said.
A Malmo resident identified only as Sanna told news agency TT she heard the gunfire from her home 500 meters (yards) away.
“It sounds terrible but sometimes it feels like you don’t even raise an eyebrow anymore. Welcome to Malmo — it’s the Wild West here,” she said.
“It’s tragic, but this happens all the time nowadays. It shouldn’t be like this, but you don’t feel safe in Malmo anymore.”
Manne Gerell, a professor of criminology at Malmo University, told AFP gang violence had “gradually increased in recent decades, but the increase has accelerated the past few years.”
Malmo has “bigger problems with gang violence” than other Swedish cities.
“We don’t really know why,” Gerell said.
But one hypothesis “is that Malmo has more poverty and other social problems than other big cities, and in cities with more social problems there tends to be more crime, even though poverty is not necessarily the cause of the criminality.”
Swedish politicians expressed frustration on Tuesday.
Monday’s shooting “is a terrible crime and it just reminds us that our most important job is to bust organized crime,” Justice Minister Morgan Johansson told TT.
The head of the opposition conservative Moderate Party, Ulf Kristersson, said Sweden needed to “do more.”
“This has to stop... There are shootings almost every week in Sweden now,” he said.
“We need longer sentences to be able to lock up criminal gang members longer, but we also need to ban ex-convicts from being allowed to return to their old environments.”
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Three dead in gang shooting in Sweden
Three dead in gang shooting in Sweden
- While shootings that lead to multiple deaths remain rare in Sweden, the normally tranquil nation has seen a rise in violent crime in recent years.
- Witnesses to Monday’s shooting said the victims were sprayed with around 15 to 20 bullets as they walked out of an Internet cafe, not far from a police station.
Greenland villagers focus on ‘normal life’ amid stress of US threat
- Proudly showing off photographs on her tablet of her grandson’s first hunt, Dorthe Olsen refuses to let the turmoil sparked by US president Donald Trump take over her life
SARFANNGUIT: Proudly showing off photographs on her tablet of her grandson’s first hunt, Dorthe Olsen refuses to let the turmoil sparked by US president Donald Trump take over her life in a small hamlet nestled deep in a Greenland fjord.
Sarfannguit, founded in 1843, is located 36 kilometers (22 miles) east of El-Sisimiut, Greenland’s second-biggest town, and is accessible by boat in summer and snowmobile or dogsled in winter if the ice freezes.
The settlement has just under 100 residents, most of whom live off from hunting and fishing.
On this February day, only the wind broke the deafening silence, whipping across the scattering of small colorful houses.
Most of them looked empty. At the end of a gravel road, a few children played outdoors, rosy-cheeked in the bitter cold, one wearing a Spiderman woolly hat.
“Everything is very calm here in Sarfannguit,” said Olsen, a 49-year-old teacher, welcoming AFP into her home for coffee and traditional homemade pastries and cakes.
In the background, a giant flat screen showed a football match from England’s Premier League.
Olsen told AFP of the tears of pride she shed when her grandson killed his first caribou at age 11, preferring to talk about her family than about Trump.
The US president has repeatedly threatened to seize the mineral-rich island, an autonomous territory of Denmark, alleging that Copenhagen is not doing enough to protect it from Russia and China.
He nevertheless climbed down last month and agreed to negotiations.
Greenland’s health and disability minister, Anna Wangenheim, recently advised Greenlanders to spend time with their families and focus on their traditions, as a means of coping with the psychological stress caused by Trump’s persistent threats.
The US leader’s rhetoric “has impacted a lot of people’s emotions during many weeks,” Wangenheim told AFP in Nuuk.
’Powerless’
Olsen insisted that the geopolitical crisis — pitting NATO allies against each other in what is the military alliance’s deepest crisis in years — “doesn’t really matter.”
“I know that Greenlanders can survive this,” she said.
Is she not worried about what would happen to her and her neighbors if the worst were to happen — a US invasion — especially given her settlement’s remote location?
“Of course I worry about those who live in the settlements,” she said.
“If there’s going to be a war and you are on a settlement, of course you feel powerless about that.”
The only thing to do is go on living as normally as possible, she said, displaying Greenland’s spirit of resilience.
That’s the message she tries to give her students, who get most of their news from TikTok.
“We tell them to just live the normal life that we live in the settlement and tell them it’s important to do that.”
The door opened. It was her husband returning from the day’s hunt, a large plastic bag in hand containing a skinned seal.
Olsen cut the liver into small pieces, offering it with bloodstained fingers to friends and family gathered around the table.
“It’s my granddaughter’s favorite part,” she explained.
Fishing and hunting account for more than 90 percent of Greenland’s exports.
No private property
Back in El-Sisimiut after a day out seal hunting on his boat, accompanied by AFP, Karl-Jorgen Enoksen stressed the importance of nature and his profession in Greenland.
He still can’t get over the fact that an ally like the United States could become so hostile toward his country.
“It’s worrying and I can’t believe it’s happening. We’re just trying to live the way we always have,” the 47-year-old said.
The notion of private property is alien to Inuit culture, characterised by communal sharing and a deep connection to the land.
“In Greenlandic tradition, our hunting places aren’t owned. And when there are other hunters on the land we are hunting on, they can just join the hunt,” he explained.
“If the US ever bought us, I can for example imagine that our hunting places would be bought.”
“I simply just can’t imagine that,” he said, recalling that his livelihood is already threatened by climate change.
He doesn’t want to see his children “inherit a bad nature — nature that we have loved being in — if they are going to buy us.”
“That’s why it is we who are supposed to take care of OUR land.”
Sarfannguit, founded in 1843, is located 36 kilometers (22 miles) east of El-Sisimiut, Greenland’s second-biggest town, and is accessible by boat in summer and snowmobile or dogsled in winter if the ice freezes.
The settlement has just under 100 residents, most of whom live off from hunting and fishing.
On this February day, only the wind broke the deafening silence, whipping across the scattering of small colorful houses.
Most of them looked empty. At the end of a gravel road, a few children played outdoors, rosy-cheeked in the bitter cold, one wearing a Spiderman woolly hat.
“Everything is very calm here in Sarfannguit,” said Olsen, a 49-year-old teacher, welcoming AFP into her home for coffee and traditional homemade pastries and cakes.
In the background, a giant flat screen showed a football match from England’s Premier League.
Olsen told AFP of the tears of pride she shed when her grandson killed his first caribou at age 11, preferring to talk about her family than about Trump.
The US president has repeatedly threatened to seize the mineral-rich island, an autonomous territory of Denmark, alleging that Copenhagen is not doing enough to protect it from Russia and China.
He nevertheless climbed down last month and agreed to negotiations.
Greenland’s health and disability minister, Anna Wangenheim, recently advised Greenlanders to spend time with their families and focus on their traditions, as a means of coping with the psychological stress caused by Trump’s persistent threats.
The US leader’s rhetoric “has impacted a lot of people’s emotions during many weeks,” Wangenheim told AFP in Nuuk.
’Powerless’
Olsen insisted that the geopolitical crisis — pitting NATO allies against each other in what is the military alliance’s deepest crisis in years — “doesn’t really matter.”
“I know that Greenlanders can survive this,” she said.
Is she not worried about what would happen to her and her neighbors if the worst were to happen — a US invasion — especially given her settlement’s remote location?
“Of course I worry about those who live in the settlements,” she said.
“If there’s going to be a war and you are on a settlement, of course you feel powerless about that.”
The only thing to do is go on living as normally as possible, she said, displaying Greenland’s spirit of resilience.
That’s the message she tries to give her students, who get most of their news from TikTok.
“We tell them to just live the normal life that we live in the settlement and tell them it’s important to do that.”
The door opened. It was her husband returning from the day’s hunt, a large plastic bag in hand containing a skinned seal.
Olsen cut the liver into small pieces, offering it with bloodstained fingers to friends and family gathered around the table.
“It’s my granddaughter’s favorite part,” she explained.
Fishing and hunting account for more than 90 percent of Greenland’s exports.
No private property
Back in El-Sisimiut after a day out seal hunting on his boat, accompanied by AFP, Karl-Jorgen Enoksen stressed the importance of nature and his profession in Greenland.
He still can’t get over the fact that an ally like the United States could become so hostile toward his country.
“It’s worrying and I can’t believe it’s happening. We’re just trying to live the way we always have,” the 47-year-old said.
The notion of private property is alien to Inuit culture, characterised by communal sharing and a deep connection to the land.
“In Greenlandic tradition, our hunting places aren’t owned. And when there are other hunters on the land we are hunting on, they can just join the hunt,” he explained.
“If the US ever bought us, I can for example imagine that our hunting places would be bought.”
“I simply just can’t imagine that,” he said, recalling that his livelihood is already threatened by climate change.
He doesn’t want to see his children “inherit a bad nature — nature that we have loved being in — if they are going to buy us.”
“That’s why it is we who are supposed to take care of OUR land.”
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