STOCKHOLM – Two blasts that shook a busy shopping street in central Stockholm were an act of terrorism, officials said Sunday, in what appeared to be a suicide bombing. It would be the first such attack in the Nordic country.
Police would not comment on a motive for the Saturday attack, which left the apparent bomber dead and two people injured. But a Swedish news agency said it received an e-mail threat just before the blast in which the writer claimed to have visited the Middle East “for jihad,” and referred to the country’s soldiers in Afghanistan and a cartoon of the Prophet Muhammad that outraged the Muslim world.
The terror threat alert in the Nordic country is not being raised from its current elevated level, although police are investigating the attacks as “a crime of terror,” spokesman Anders Thornberg told reporters.
“When we go through the existing criteria and the series of events that occurred it fits well within the description of a terror crime,” Thornberg said. He declined to elaborate.
Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt described the attack as “a most worrying attempt at a terrorist attack.” Bildt commented in a Twitter message that it “failed – but could have been truly catastrophic.”