Sweden’s prime minister, Ulf Kristersson has summoned the Head of the Armed Forces to assist in reducing gang violence.
On Friday, the two men will meet with the country’s police head to explore what role the military might play.
It follows a horrific 12 hours in which two men were shot dead in Stockholm and a 25-year-old woman was killed in a home bomb in a village north of the capital.
Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson declared in a rare public address, “We will hunt down the gangs and defeat them.”
Armed Forces Chief Micael Byden told Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter he was prepared to assist police efforts.
However, recent discussions indicate that military may take over certain policing activities to allow cops to free up resources for crime-fighting.
Some critics have called the planned solutions shallow, claiming they just address the symptoms of the violence rather than the core reasons.
According to Dagens Nyheter, 12 individuals have been slain in gang violence this month, the most since December 2019.
The current spike has been linked to a conflict involving the Foxtrot network, which has been rocked by infighting and divided into two hostile factions.
Kristersson stated that Sweden had never seen anything like it and that “no other country in Europe” was in a similar predicament.
He emphasized that children and innocent bystanders were increasingly becoming victims of violence throughout the country.
More than 60 people were killed in shootings in Sweden last year, the greatest number on record, and this year is expected to be the same or worse.
Police have linked the violence to poor integration of immigrants, a widening gap between rich and poor and drug use.
