Malmo shooting: Boy, 15, dies and other teen fighting for life after attackers open fire at pizza parlour

The incident happened in Malmo (file photo)
Pontus Ohlsson/Unsplash
Jacob Jarvis10 November 2019

A teenage boy has died while another is fighting for life following a shooting at a pizza parlour in Sweden.

The shooting occurred in a busy square in Malmo and said the boy who was killed was one of two people hit, after unknown attackers targeted the pizza parlour at about 9pm on Saturday.

Witnesses reported seeing the attackers flee the scene on bicycles.

The shooting took place minutes after an explosion in another Malmo district, where a bomb set under a car detonated, destroying the vehicle and damaging other cars.

Police could not say yet if the two incidents were linked.

Authorities had not identified suspects in either case, which followed similar incidents and explosions in the southern city recently that have alarmed politicians and residents.

Katrin Stjernfeldt Jammeh, chairwoman of the local municipality council, told Swedish broadcaster SVT she was concerned that Saturday's events would escalate violence seen in past years in Malmo, a city of some 320,000 residents.

"It is every parent's nightmare to lose a child. It's been a heavy and black night in Malmo," Ms Stjernfeldt Jammeh said.

She added that Swedish police considered many similar incidents in the past to be linked and gang-related.

"We've been in this situation before with similar events. This is what the police have warned about, namely an escalation of cruel and reckless violence in Malmo," she said.

Explosions and shootings in the past few years in Malmo, Sweden's third-largest city, have been linked mainly to organised crime and feuding gangs.

Ulf Kristersson, leader of the centre-right opposition Moderate Party, urged Social Democrat prime minister Stefan Lofven to act quickly to curb the violence.

Local resident Jacob Bjorkander told Swedish newspaper Sydsvenskan he had been cycling near the pizza parlour with his two young children on the night of the shooting.

"It's regrettable, absolutely awful, and lacking in any respect," Mr Bjorkander told Sydsvenskan.

"This should be the end of it. It's gone too far. People should be out on the streets showing what they think, that we don't want this in our town," he said.

Swedish news agency TT said five fatal shootings and 29 explosions, including Saturday's incidents, had taken place in Malmo this year.

Reporting by agencies.

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