A shooting outside Stockholm left two people dead and two others wounded, police said Monday, in what appears to be a feud between criminal gangs.
An unidentified foreign man and a teenager were killed in the shooting in Farsta, a suburb south of Sweden’s capital. Two men in their 20s were later arrested on suspicion of murder and attempted murder.
A man with an automatic weapon opened fire at around 6 p.m. Saturday outside the entrance to a subway station and struck four people. A 15-year-old boy died shortly after of his wounds, with the second victim, a 43-year-old man, dying later.
Justice Minister Gunnar Strommer said Sunday that police believe that a total of 21 shots had been fired and described the shooting as “domestic terrorism.”
One of those wounded was a woman in her 60s who was unlocking her bicycle. She told Swedish public radio that she heard about five shots. “Oh, I’ve been shot in the knee,” she told SR and added that she was bleeding, sought shelter behind a wall and yelled at others to call for help. She wasn’t identified.
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Criminal gangs have become a growing problem in Sweden in recent decades, with an increasing number of drive-by shootings, bombings and grenade attacks. Most of the violence is taking place in Sweden’s three largest cities: Stockholm, Goteborg and Malmo.
There have been 144 shootings so far this year, with 18 fatalities recorded, according to police statistics. Those shootings also wounded 41 people, including innocent bystanders.
In 2022, Sweden hit a record with 62 people fatally shot. There were 391 shootings that year, and 107 people were wounded. A year earlier, there were 344 shootings, with 45 killed and 115 wounded.
A 2021 report by the Swedish national council for crime prevention said Sweden had overtaken Italy and Eastern European countries primarily because of the violent activities of organized criminal gangs.
Sweden’s center-right government has vowed to tackle gang-related crime by tightening laws.
