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Sweden Is Experiencing String Of Car Fires, Perpetrators Have Not Been Caught

Malmo, an otherwise peaceful place in Sweden, is experiencing a wave of car fires.
Second day of the Stockholm Husby riots. The picture depicts three cars recently put to fire in the Stockholm suburb of Husby in 2013 1 photo
Photo: Wikipedia user Telefonkiosk
The third-largest city in the country and the sixth-largest Nordic town has recorded 70 cars burned down since the beginning of last month, a concerning number for a municipality with less than 400,000 inhabitants.

We do not like to be Captain Obvious here, but car fires are not normal anywhere, especially when they are intentional, as it is evident in this case.

As Sweden’s The Local reports, most of the fires were set in Rosengard, a district of the municipality that has an unfortunate reputation of social problems and gang-related issues.

In the first week of August, 23 cars were burnt in the town of Malmo, and 15 of them occurred in the Rosengard district, so you can see what we were referring to above. This is not the first time when Sweden is affected by cars being set alight, as the year 2009 showed that 219 vehicles were burned in Rosengard alone.

Authorities have noted that the fires seemed to be on a downward spiral, as only 52 cars were burned intentionally last year in the same district. Also in 2015, the number of car burnings across Malmo halved, so last year was significantly better than 2016 from this point of view.

Police representatives are convinced that this pace will not continue indefinitely, but they have yet to detain any suspects, in spite of the fact that they have requested and received extra resources.

On August 11, 2016, five cars were set alight in less than an hour in multiple neighborhoods. The local police force has not revealed why it believes these fires take place, as they do not seem directed against particular individuals, and the municipality has not encountered “any significant social unrest.

Malmo has the fourth-highest proportion of foreign-born residents of any city in Sweden, and 14% of the population is consisted of foreign nationals. Some believe that the immigrants are to blame for the pyromania, but this has not been proven because no suspects have been apprehended.
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About the author: Sebastian Toma
Sebastian Toma profile photo

Sebastian's love for cars began at a young age. Little did he know that a career would emerge from this passion (and that it would not, sadly, involve being a professional racecar driver). In over fourteen years, he got behind the wheel of several hundred vehicles and in the offices of the most important car publications in his homeland.
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