One person was killed and another wounded on Friday, August 15th, in a shooting near a mosque in Örebro, Sweden, in what police believe is linked to organized crime gangs, something Sweden has been battling with for a while.
Authorities have not released the deceased’s identity or further details about the circumstances of the shooting. The public has been urged to avoid the area while the search for the shooter continues.
“We are currently actively pursuing the perpetrator or perpetrators,” police spokesman Anders Dahlman said. In a statement, police said they believed the shooting was connected to Sweden’s “criminal network milieu.”
Sweden has been grappling for years with rising organized crime, with criminal networks involved in drug and arms trafficking, welfare fraud, and violent attacks. Police say leaders increasingly operate from abroad, ordering murders and assaults via social media and often using children below the age of criminal responsibility to carry them out. Sweden ranked third in Europe for homicides involving firearms per 100,000 inhabitants in 2022, behind Montenegro and Albania.
