Swedish Police Attacked by 100 Masked Migrant Youths

Swedish police in the city of Trollhattan were attacked by up to a hundred masked migrant youths armed with sticks and bats during a riot in the Kronogården suburb on Thursday.

The masked migrant youths attacked the officers during the second night of rioting in the area. They also attacked the officer’s vehicles, slashing the tyres of two police cars. Only one man was arrested in connection with the riots, Swedish paper Aftonbladet reports.

The riot is said to have dramatically escalated after several youths attempted to set a tyre on fire in the street and a security guard intervened to put out the fire. The guard was then attacked by the youths who threw stones at him.

Peter Asp, the communications officer for the City of Trollhattan, said the riots were “power struggle for territory in the district” among rival gangs. He claimed that the young men rioting were Somali migrants, while the police have only said the men come originally from an Arabic speaking country.

Police believe that the riots were sparked by an incident earlier in the week, when children were taken away from their parents by protective services. An administrative court ruled that the parents of the children had physically and psychologically assaulted them.

One resident described the riots saying, “they drove a police car and threw stones at it. I’m a little scared, and it’s really hard. I can not sleep at night, that night I slept only three hours.”

Attacks on police in migrant-heavy suburbs have become more and more common in Sweden in recent years. A leaked report earlier this week showed that the number of no-go zones had increased by fifty percent in only two years.

While the report lists 23 official “vulnerable areas” some estimate that there could be as many as 55 no-go zones in Sweden.

Earlier this year Swedish police officer Peter Springare said that migrants were committing a disproportionate amount of crime in problem suburbs. He said that almost all of the serious criminal cases that came across his desk involved migrants; comments that saw him investigated for “racial hatred”, although the charges were later dropped.