For the fourth day in a row, clashes have erupted in several Swedish cities, allegedly sparked by the apparent burning of the Quran by a far-right, anti-immigrant group, according to the BBC.
According to local media, three people were injured Sunday in Norrköping, eastern Sweden, when police fired warning shots at rioters.
At least 17 people were arrested after several vehicles were set on fire.
On Saturday, during a far-right rally in Malmo, Sweden’s southern city, vehicles including a bus were set on fire.
Earlier, the Iranian and Iraqi governments summoned Swedish envoys to protest the burning.
Rasmus Paludan, a Danish-Swedish extremist who leads the Stram Kurs, or Hard Line, movement, stated that he had burned Islam’s most sacred text and would do so again.
At least 16 police officers were reportedly injured and several police vehicles were destroyed during unrest on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday in areas where the far-right group planned events, including the Stockholm suburbs and the cities of Linköping and Norrköping.
Paludan had threatened to hold another rally in Norrköping on Sunday, prompting the gathering of counter-demonstrators, according to Deutsche Welle.
According to local police, they fired warning shots after coming under attack, and three people were apparently struck by ricochets.
Sweden’s national police chief, Anders Thornberg, stated in a statement on Saturday that demonstrators demonstrated a disregard for police officers’ lives, adding: “We have witnessed violent riots in the past. However, this is not the case.”
Protests against Stram Kurs’s plans to burn the Quran have previously devolved into violence in Sweden. In 2020, protesters set cars on fire and vandalized storefronts in Malmö.
Paludan – who was sentenced to a month in prison in Denmark in 2020 for a variety of offenses including racism – has also attempted to organize similar Quran burnings in other European countries, including France and Belgium.
