Four residential buildings in Sweden were rocked by explosions in the space of an hour, as the wave of violence that has swept the Scandinavian country due to criminal gangs appears to have no end in sight, The Guardian reports.

The explosions were reported to have occurred overnight, with the first two occurring shortly after 1:00 a.m. local time. The explosions occurred 10 minutes apart in the city of Gothenburg, Sweden’s second largest.

“Both places are surrounded, technical investigations are ongoing,” the police said, adding that forensic teams are working on the spot.

After two o’clock in the morning, two more explosions were heard with an interval of several minutes. One happened in Norsborg, a suburb south of Stockholm, and the other in Nyköping, a city 100 kilometers from the Swedish capital.

All 4 explosions took place in residential buildings, but the police reported that there were no casualties.

Until August 15 of this year, no less than 109 explosions were recorded in Sweden, for which it blames criminal groups. Swedish officers say the explosions are mainly used to intimidate different people, while the armed attacks are aimed at killing rival gang members.

Brutal crimes that shocked Sweden

The Nordic country has faced an unprecedented wave of violent crime in recent years, with several high-profile murders shocking the Swedish public.

Einar, one of Sweden’s most popular rappers, was shot dead in Stockholm in October 2021. A 19-year-old boy, whose real name is Nils Gronberg, was killed in a residential area of ​​the Swedish capital. A year earlier, Einar was kidnapped and beaten by rival rappers known for their ties to a Stockholm criminal group.

An opinion poll published in June 2022 shows that 80% of citizens in Sweden, considered a bastion of democracy for decades, would not object to the use of the military to help the police fight a wave of armed crime.

In 2021, the August killing of a 12-year-old girl near Stockholm sent a wave of emotion across the country, reigniting the debate about migrant integration. While politicians promise to act after every crime, Swedish police say they are overwhelmed by a wave of violent gang-related crime.

Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson’s centre-right coalition won parliamentary elections last October, promising, among other things, tougher measures to fight crime and curb immigration.

Even the Swedish Social Democrats no longer support migration to the country

But even the previous government led by Social Democrat Magdalena Andersson took steps to seriously strengthen anti-immigration laws, given that these criminal groups are in many cases made up of migrants who have not integrated into Swedish society.

Andersson said last April that Sweden had failed to integrate many of the immigrants it had taken in over the past two decades, and that the situation had led to the creation of parallel societies and gang violence.

“Segregation has gone so far that we now have parallel societies in Sweden. We live in the same country, but in completely different realities,” she said at the press conference.

Over the past two decades, the number of Swedish residents born outside the country has doubled and reached 2 million, that is, a fifth of the entire population.