Far-right strife sparks Sweden unrest

STOCKHOLM－Several days of unrest in Sweden, sparked by a far-right group's plans to burn the Quran, have injured several dozen people, police said on Monday, calling for more resources to deal with the violence.

Eight people were arrested in the city of Norrkoping and 18 people were detained in the neighboring city of Linkoping, police said in a statement.

On Sunday, clashes erupted in both cities for the second time in four days over rallies by anti-immigration party Hard Line, led by the Danish-Swedish politician Rasmus Paludan.

A crowd of about 150 people threw stones at officers and police vehicles, and set fire to cars. Police said they responded by firing warning shots and "three people seem to have been hit by ricochets" and were hospitalized in Norrkoping, which has around 130,000 residents and is about 160 kilometers southwest of Stockholm.

"All three injured are arrested on suspicion of crime," police said, adding that none of them had serious injuries.

A photographer for Swedish news agency TT at the scene reported that several riot police officers were seen carrying a wounded man to an ambulance.

Paludan and his Hard Line party had planned a demonstration in Norrkoping on Sunday but he never showed up in the city, Swedish media reported.

Hard Line's rallies have sparked several clashes between the police and counterprotesters across the Scandinavian country in recent days, leaving 26 police officers and 14 civilians injured, police said on Monday.

On Friday evening, clashes between demonstrators and counterprotesters erupted in the central city of Orebro before Paludan's plan to burn a copy of the Quran there, leaving 12 police officers injured and four police vehicles set ablaze.

In Landskrona, in southern Sweden, a few hundred of mostly young people threw stones and set cars, tires and dustbins on fire. They also erected a barrier fence that obstructed traffic on Saturday evening. Similar unrest took place in nearby Malmo, where a city bus was set on fire, among other disturbances, late on Saturday.

In the wake of the string of incidents, Iraq's Foreign Ministry said on Sunday that it had summoned the Swedish charge d'affaires in Baghdad.

It warned that the affair could have "serious repercussions" on "relations between Sweden and Muslims in general, both Muslim and Arab countries and Muslim communities in Europe".

Paludan, a Danish lawyer who also holds Swedish citizenship, set up Hard Line, or Stram Kurs, in 2017.

Agencies Via Xinhua