The police in the multicultural southern Swedish city of Malmö are warning the public to be on guard at night in case they come across a bomb.
The city’s police put out the warning this week due to an increase in explosions in the last several years, Sveriges Radio reports.
Police officer Göran Holmgren said that despite the relatively low risk of being hit by an explosion, the public should still be on alert saying: “We want to alert people to be a little more cautious. If you see something strange, a bag or a package… A bomb can look like anything.”
The warning comes following the discovery of a live hand grenade at a school in Skogshöjden this week. The school was forced to be partially evacuated while a bomb squad arrived on the scene and disposed of the grenade.
Bombings and explosions have greatly increased in Sweden since the start of the year, with Malmö, in particular, seeing a large proportion of the explosions.
The city saw 58 explosions in 2017, 45 in 2018, and 23 as of late August, including an incident that left a 12-year-old child injured in April when an explosive went off outside the girl’s house, causing smashed glass from her window to fly into her bedroom as she was sleeping.
A man from Malmö was also arrested in August in connection to an alleged bombing that took place outside a tax board office building in Copenhagen in neighbouring Denmark. This week, another man, aged 22, was also arrested in Malmö and is considered a suspect in the incident.
Many have expressed serious concern over the rise in explosions and shootings in Sweden, with even Swedish King Carl XVI Gustaf publicly speaking out on the issue.