SEVERAL masked men stormed a theater in Stockholm on Wednesday evening. They set off smoke bombs during an anti-fascist event, Swedish police and participants said.
About 50 people took part in the event at the Gubbangen theater on the southern outskirts of the Swedish capital, organized by the leftist Vansterpartiet and Greens parties.
“Three people were taken by ambulance to hospital,” police said on its website, adding that they had no information about any injuries suffered.
According to the Expo anti-racism party, which was invited to give a presentation at the event, “a group of Nazis” broke into the theater lobby just before the event started and threw smoke bombs into the hall.
“The Nazis attacked visitors with physical violence… (and) damaged the building before throwing a type of smoke bomb that filled the entrance hall with smoke,” Expo wrote on its website.
“It is appalling that a meeting organized by a leftist party has been attacked,” said Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson, quoted by the TT news agency.
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“This type of hateful behavior has no place in our free and open society,” he said, adding that he had contacted the party leader to express his “deepest support”.
All of Sweden’s political parties condemned the attack as “an attack on democracy”, TT said.
Vansterpartiet leader Nooshi Dadgostar told SVT television that an “open event, for equality between individuals” was “vehemently attacked by those who appear to be Nazis”.
He also called on “all political forces” to fight the “far right that threatens our democracy”. (AFP/Z-3)
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