A 12-year-old in the southern Swedish city of Malmö was injured following an explosion, as police say the number of incidents nationwide is growing.
An explosion in the Nobeltorget area resulted in the damage of a four-storey residential building at around two o’clock in the morning on Monday.
A 12-year-old girl, who was sleeping in her bedroom at the time, was injured when her window smashed as a result of the blast and was taken to hospital for treatment, Swedish broadcaster SVT reports.
SVT’s Mikael Nilsson described the explosion as a “powerful detonation,” while police press officer Calle Persson said police were questioning any potential witnesses to see if a car had passed on the nearby road.
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The bomb squad, which was also deployed to the scene, said they did not find any other explosives in the immediate area. So far, investigators have been vague as to the exact cause of the explosion.
The incident is just the latest explosion in Sweden this year. According to the Swedish Crime Prevention Council Brå, the number of explosive incidents nationwide has increased over the last year.
In 2018, they said that the country saw 37 blasts within the first three months of the year while this year there were 48 incidents over the same period.
While there has been an increase across Sweden, Malmö itself has actually seen a decline since 2016 where there had been 62 cases over the first three months of the year.
Police say that explosions have come from a number of sources with some simply being powerful fireworks while sometimes more serious devices, such as hand grenades, are used.
Over the last several years, Sweden has been attempting to combat the use of hand grenades among criminal gangs, even offering amnesty for the weapons.
The programme was met with little success as no hand grenades were turned in as of January of this year, although other kinds of explosives were.
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