“Dozens” of masked youths flooded cities in western Sweden Monday night, torching cars with Molotov cocktails, in what authorities describe as a “coordinated attack.”
The BBC reports that more than 80 cars were torched in the attack, most in the city of Gothenberg, but some as far as Stockholm, the country’s capital city. Officials say they believe the attacks were coordinated on social media and then carried out with “military” precision.
The “youths” took to the streets in the middle of the night, dressed in black clothing and face masks, and armed with small fire bombs filled with accelerant. In some cases, the youths simply rolled the “incendiary devices” under cars left parked close together in shopping center and hospital lots, burning several vehicles at once.
Several social media users were able to capture the fires on video.
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The country’s top officials weighed in Tuesday morning, expressing mostly disbelief at the series of attacks.
“I am really furious,” the country’s prime minister, Stefan Löfven, told Radio Sweden, according to The Guardian. “What the hell are they up to?”
“It looks like very coordinated, almost like a military operation.” Lofven added.
Although several of the “youths” are in custody, Swedish authorities say they still do not have a motive for the attacks. They also have not publicly identified the arsonists, though some lesser-known media outlets claim that the “youths” are, in fact, migrants (those allegations have yet to be confirmed, even by these small outlets, however).
Sweden has been suffering under a wave of gang violence, though reports in international media are rare. Reuters claims that “[d]ozens of people have been killed in the past two years in attacks in the capital Stockholm and other big cities by gangs that are mostly from run-down suburbs dominated by immigrants.”
The violence has become so noticeable within Sweden that the notoriously progressive country is experiencing a populist, anti-immigrant uprising. The Swedish far-right party, the Sweden Democrats, are expected to make major gains in the country’s September 9 election on a largely anti-immigrant platform.