Explosions in Stockholm: Suicide Bomber Threatened Swedes, "Pig" Mohammad Cartoonist
Two explosions rocked the downtown shopping district in Stockholm this evening as holiday shoppers crowded the chainstore-clogged area around Drottninggatan. According to early Swedish media reports, a car parked on the busy shopping street exploded at just after 5PM today, wounding two passersby. Two minutes later, say investigators, a second explosion was heard from a nearby street, where police found a bag stuffed with nails and the body, it appears, of the bomber.
According to this report in the tabloid newspaper Expressen, the Swedish security service and TT newswire (the Swedish equivalent to the AP) received a threat "against the Swedish people" ten minutes before the explosions. In a letter and audiotape, the bomber wrote that "Now your children, daughters, and sisters die like our brothers and sisters die." He continued:
Our actions speak for themselves. As long as you don't stop your war against Islam, and you degrade the Prophet, and your support for that stupid pig [cartoonist Lars] Vilks."
The bomber cited the Swedish military's involvement with NATO in Afghanistan and "threatened" those serving there. According to Expressen, the letter also urges Muslims to fight back against "Islamophobia" in Sweden, presumably by murdering Swedes, and calls on "all mujahadin in Sweden and across Europe" to rise up. As is typical with semi-literate religious fanatics, the attack, it would seem, was a massive failure. The only death was the bomber and, from the photographs floating around in the Swedish press, property damage seems to be minimal.
