Ten people have been arrested in the Stockholm region this week following two shootings that took place within an hour of each other on Tuesday evening.
Police were alerted to the first shooting on Tuesday evening at around 8:30 p.m. in Rissne, a neighbourhood in the municipality Sundbyberg just north of the city of Stockholm. Five men aged between 20 and 25 were arrested in connection with the incident, which has been classified as attempted murder.
Police stated that the male victim in the case was wounded by the gunfire but remains in stable condition with non-life-threatening injuries, SVT reports.
A second shooting was reported just less than an hour later in Sätra in southern Stockholm, with a man reportedly shot in the leg, according to Ola Österling, the press spokesman at the Stockholm police.
Five more men were arrested in connection with the second shooting but police were hesitant to state whether or not the two shootings were linked to each other, but police press spokesman Per Fahlström stated investigators were looking into the possibility of links between the incidents.
The shootings are just the latest in a wave of shootings and bombings in the Stockholm region, many of which are linked to ongoing gang conflicts that erupted on Christmas Day last year with the killing of Mehdi ”Dumle” Sachit, a well-know gang member linked to the Death Patrol network associated with the migrant-heavy Rinkeby area.
In January the Stockholm region saw 13 bombings within the first 26 days of the year, or an average of a bombing every two days.
According to Swedish media reports, much of the violence is linked to a well-known criminal gang leader nicknamed the Kurdish Fox, who runs a drug trafficking network in the Swedish capital and is currently believed to be in Turkey.
While the centre-right Swedish national government has promised a national action plan to deal with gang violence, it continues in the Swedish capital and elsewhere across the European Union member-state.