An 18-year-old rapper executed on a sports field, a second man shot dead and a 25-year-old woman killed in a devastating bomb blast are just the latest victims of Stockholm’s gangland violence.
The streets of the Swedish capital have descended into carnage amid a spate of lawlessness, with the three murders being committed within 12 hours of each other.
Late on Wednesday, an 18-year-old rapper was shot dead at the Mälarhöjden sports ground in Fruängen in southern Stockholm in a brazen attack during a football training session.
Within hours, one man was killed and another was wounded in a shooting in Jordbro, south of the Swedish capital. Minutes after police were called to reports of gunfire, a pickup truck crashed into a house in the area before two men ran from the vehicle.
And early on Thursday morning, a 25-year-old woman died in an explosion that ripped through her home and four neighbouring buildings in Storvreta outside Uppsala, north of Stockholm.
Footage of the bomb’s aftermath shows the woman’s building ripped apart, the smashed windows hanging haphazardly down the front of her home in a scene that witnesses have likened to a war zone.
Police believe the woman, a Masters student who was studying to become a teacher, was not the target of the bomb. The real target was a relative of gangster Rawa Majid, known as the ‘Purple Fox’, who was living next door to the victim but appears to have been away at the time, reports Aftonbladet.
‘There were panicked screams and the smell of smoke,’ a neighbour of the young woman told Expressen. ‘It was as if we are in a war zone.’
The two fatal shooting now brings the death toll from gun violence in September to 11, making it the deadliest month for shootings since police started keeping statistics in 2016.
