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Sweden is considering using its military to help police in the battle against gang crime, following a sharp increase in deadly shootings and bomb attacks in the Scandinavian country.
Ulf Kristersson, the centre-right prime minister, told the nation in a televised address that he had called a meeting on Friday with the head of Sweden’s defence forces and the country’s police to discuss how the army could help out.
“I cannot emphasise enough how serious the situation is. Sweden has never seen anything like it before. No other country in Europe sees anything like it currently,” Kristersson said on Thursday night.
Police chiefs have said that Sweden is facing its most serious domestic security situation since the second world war as immigrant drug gangs engage in a bloody conflict. Police believe the gangs are increasingly using children to commit the crimes, as those under 18 often go unpunished or receive low sentences from the courts.
Last year already set a record for the number of deadly shootings in Sweden and this September looks like becoming the worst month since records began.
“It is political naivete and cluelessness that has brought us here,” said the Swedish prime minister. “It is an irresponsible immigration policy and failed integration effort that has brought us here. Social exclusion and parallel societies feed the criminal gangs, there they can ruthlessly recruit children and train them as future killers.”
Swedish news bulletins have been filled with a daily count of the shootings and bomb attacks that have started not just to kill gang members but people in their families, as well as innocent bystanders. “Innocent people are being murdered and injured,” said Anders Thornberg, Sweden’s police chief.
Police have laid much of the blame for the violence, which has centred this month around the capital Stockholm, on a split inside one of the country’s biggest drug gangs, led by a Kurdish immigrant to Sweden who is now holed up in Turkey.
Turkey is blocking Sweden’s application to Nato, saying that Stockholm needs to take more action against what it terms Kurdish terrorists. But some in Sweden argue that the Swedish government should raise the issue of the high number of Swedish criminals sheltered in Turkey with the authorities in Ankara.
The opposition Social Democrats, in power from 2014 until 2022, this week called for the government to draft in the military to protect government buildings and allow the police to investigate the violence.
Kristersson said “everything was on the table” but gave no concrete details of what the army could do.
He added: “We must hunt the gangs, and we must defeat the gangs . . . We will do what is necessary to restore order in Sweden.”
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