In the early hours of Thursday, a loud explosion ripped through a quiet residential street of new-build family homes just north of the Swedish city of Uppsala.
Soha Saad, 24, was killed in the blast. She lived with her parents, and had recently qualified as a teacher. In footage of the aftermath, her mother can be heard screaming for her daughter, cursing the nation to which they once fled.
Saad was one of three victims of gangland violence in a violent 12-hour spell last week, and one of 12 people to be killed in September – Sweden‘s deadliest month since December 2019.
In the same 12 hours, 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, and hours later one man was killed and another was wounded in a shooting in Jordbro, south of the capital.
The trio were the latest people killed after being caught up in ‘terrorist-like’ gangland violence that has gripped Sweden, with stories of assassinations, child soldiers and bomb attacks regularly making the front pages of the country’s newspapers.
The bomb in the early hours of Thursday morning, set outside Saad’s family home in the dead of night, is thought to have been meant for he neighbours – relatives of a man who is now the most notorious criminal in modern Swedish history.
‘Kurdish Fox’, whose real name is Rawa Majid, became a household name in Sweden last Christmas when the feud between the 37-year-old’s criminal network Foxtrot and the Dalen gang, led by Mikael ‘The Greek’ Tenezos, 25, spread fear in several cities as they fought over shares of the country’s highly lucrative drugs market.
The feud between the two gang leaders soon seemed to cool off, yet several violent crimes connected to Foxtrot involving teenagers and young adults – both as offenders and victims – would occur over the months that followed.
This week, a 16-year-old boy is on trial, accused of executing a 15-year-old at point blank range in a sushi restaurant in the Stockholm suburb of Skogås in January.
Ali Shafaei had escaped Taliban persecution and fled Afghanistan in 2019.
The attack was carried out on the orders of an ally of Majid, according to Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet.
Read More: The ‘terrorist-like’ gangland violence gripping Sweden
