Sweden is suffering a brutal spike in gun crime. As of September 28, at least 11 people have been shot dead so far this month, the highest monthly number since 2016 when Sweden started keeping records.
The violence is suspected to be mostly connected with the notorious Foxtrot gang, a crime organisation involved in the worldwide drug trade and under the leadership of Rawa Majid, aka the “Kurdish Fox”.
With the gang allegedly having undergone a split, as The Guardian reports, a deadly wave of shootings and explosions is engulfing the Scandinavian country.
In the past two days alone alone, three people have been killed in three separate incidents.
On September 27, an 18-year-old man was murdered at a sports ground in Stockholm where children and young people were exercising. At midnight, the day ended with a second man being shot dead south of the city.
In the third incident, a 25-year-old woman died in an explosion in the early hours of September 28, according to the police. Swedish media said the police suspect murder and that the killers were targeting a neighbour where the victim lived in Uppsala, west of Stockholm.
“The situation is inhuman, incomprehensible and beyond bounds. Crime has reached levels we have not seen before. We have a serious situation in Uppsala and the country,” said the Commanding Officer of the Uppsala Police, Catarina Bowall.
Local police chief Ulf Johansson said: “The very serious recent events are extremely brutal and we are seeing a development of violence escalating that we have not seen before. We are working around the clock with full force to break the trend of violence and combat those responsible for the violence and insecurity.”
The week began with the killing of Erik Viiri, a blind 71-year-old Swede who was having a beer in a pub. The shooter was apparently aiming for a 23-year-old man, who also died. A 20-year-old waitress was shot in the leg, while a 45-year-old guest was also injured.
Erik Viiri, a blind 71-year-old Swedish man was shot dead at a pub in Sweden this week.
Can you imagine what it would feel like if your blind grandfather was killed by migrants while Swedish politicians and journalists, who are responsible for reckless mass migration policies,… pic.twitter.com/ewy0RtAyFK
— Luai Ahmed (@JustLuai) September 28, 2023
Justice minister Gunnar Strömmer said the events were “deeply tragic” and “the worst you could imagine in a decent society”.
In 2022, the number of shootings in Sweden reached 391, the highest observed in the period between 2017 and 2022. Of those, 62 were fatal.
Sweden has seen a strong shift to the political Right as a result of the surge in criminality, which some have attributed to migration and multiculturalism.
The right-wing Sweden Democrat party, the most critical political group regarding migration and the societal problems it sees as associated with it, was the big winner in last September’s national elections.
The left-wing opposition that was in control for the past few decades in Sweden said such an analysis was “racist”, despite the Sweden Democrats also being made up of a number of members of an immigrant background.
The rise in fatal shootings has undermined the perception of Sweden as a high-trust, low-crime society.
