A large explosion took place in an industrial area in the Stockholm region early Thursday morning, marking the 13th explosion Sweden has seen in the last 26 days.
The heavy explosion took place in Botkyrka, just south of the city of Stockholm, in an industrial area at around 1:30 am on Thursday morning, with police calling the incident a “powerful detonation.”
“Something has slammed outside an industrial building and there was a hole in the façade,” Daniel Kaissidis, the officer in charge of the Södertörn Fire Service Association told broadcaster SVT.
Towe Hägg, a press spokesperson at the Stockholm police commented on the explosion on Thursday morning saying, “There were people in the industrial area in connection with the explosion, but I don’t know exactly where they were. But there are no injuries reported.”
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— Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) January 24, 2023
Investigators say they have no suspects in custody in connection with the blast so far but are reviewing CCTV footage in an attempt to identify the culprits and determine a possible motive.
The blast is the 13th in Sweden since the start of the year, around one every other day, and comes as the Stockholm region has seen near-constant acts of gang violence since the death of notorious gang member Mehdi ”Dumle” Sachit, who was shot dead on Christmas morning.
According to SVT, eight of the 13 explosions have taken place in the Stockholm region, with only one taking place in a “vulnerable” no-go area, which was in the city of Gothenburg.
“The side effect of blasts is that you get a large purulent wound in the body of society that remains over time in the local community. It has a strong psychological effect,” police gang expert Gunnar Appelgren said. “The basic security we want where we live disappears,” he added.
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Bombings and attacks with hand grenades are nothing new in Sweden and have been a problem for years, with most of the blasts usually related to violence between criminal gangs.
Since most of the hand grenades used in the bombings are imported from overseas, primarily from the Balkans, Swedish lawmakers passed a law to tackle the importation of hand grenades in 2017.
However, a recent report revealed that in those five years, just five grenades have been discovered, while grenades were used in around a hundred bombings in the same period.
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