STOCKHOLM - More than 100 cars have been set alight in across Sweden overnight, as gangs of masked youths went rampaging in a series of arson attacks believed to have been coordinated on social media.
Dozens of vehicles burned in Sweden's four major cities - Stockholm, Malmo, Gothenburg and Uppsala - on Monday evening and in the early hours of Tuesday.
Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Löfven reacted with anger and did not hold back during a radio interview on Tuesday morning.
'I'm furious, for real. My question to these people is 'what the f*** are you doing?',' he told Sveriges Radio P1.
'You're ruining things for yourselves, your parents and your neighbourhoods,' Lofven said, adding the incident 'looked very coordinated, almost like a military operation'.
'Sweden has tolerated this for too long. This must end now,' Ulf Kristersson, leader of the conservative opposition party, the Moderates, wrote on his Facebook account.
In Gothenburg and surrounding towns of Lysekil, Falkenberg and Trollhättan, a total of around 100 cars have been demolished.
In Stockholm, and Uppsala, some 45 miles north of the capital, a total of 13 cars were set alight in a handful locations on Tuesday morning.
Gothenburg police say they have identified some of the culprits and and two people have so far been arrested.
'We have already started making calls to the parents of the youths who were taking part in this,' Gothenburg police spokesperson Ulla Brehm told SVT.
'We chose not to arrest anyone on the spot, but have identified them.'
Ms Brehm could not confirm that the series of identical car fires had been orchestrated via social media but said that 'the fact that it has been co-ordinated in so many places indicate it'.
All culprits in the attacks have been described by witnesses as wearing dark clothing and hoods.
Dramatic footage showed youths targeting vehicles in at a major shopping centre and hospital car park at Frölunda Torg, south-west Gothenburg.
The area around Frölunda Torg have seen several deadly shootings in the past two years as local gangs have been at war over drug trade in Gothenburg.
Due to the criminal gang activity and shootings, Frölunda was last year deemed as one of the more violent areas in Sweden's second largest city.
The two people arrested today, aged between 16 and 21, are both from Frölunda.
The largest group of youngsters apparently gathered in Kronogården in Trollhättan north of Gothenburg where as many as 40 people threw stones and started fires.
Kronogården has also seen a rise in gang violence in recent years.
It made international news in 2015, when 21-year-old Anton Lundin Pettersson killed three people at a local school, in a racist attack targeting Kronogården due to its high immigrant population.
Police in Trollhättan have identified three people in connection with last night's violence, but all three are under the age of 15 and have therefore been released into the care of their parents, Aftonbladet reports.(FA)
