STOCKHOLM: Up to 80 cars were set on fire overnight across western Sweden by masked vandals in what police suspect a coordinated attack over three weeks before the general election.

Most of the cars were burned at around 20 locations in Sweden’s second largest city of Gothenburg on Monday.

Authorities said two suspects, aged between 16 and 21, were arrested in Gothenburg and questioned.

Police said they believed the attacks were organised on social media. No one was injured in the car blazes.

“We’ve never seen these many cars set on fire before,” Hans Lippens, police spokesman in western Sweden, told AFP.

The incident triggered outrage among Swedish politicians who are busy campaigning for the September 9 general election.

“I’m furious. My question to (the perpetrators) is: what the hell are you doing?” Social Democratic Prime Minister Stefan Lofven told public broadcaster Swedish Radio on Tuesday.

“You’re ruining things for yourselves, your parents and your neighbourhoods,” Lofven said, adding the incident “looked very coordinated, almost like a military operation”. Cars set ablaze is common in Sweden. In Stockholm’s suburbs alone, such crimes happen almost on a daily basis, usually attributed to disadvantaged youths.

Last year, 1,457 cars were “deliberately” set on fire across Sweden, compared to 1,641 in 2016, according to the Swedish Civil Contingencies Agency’s figures.

“Sweden has tolerated this for too long. This must end now,” Ulf Kristersson, leader of the conservative opposition party, the Moderates, wrote on his Facebook account.

Last year in February, two days after US President Donald Trump’s baffling comments linking crime to immigration in Sweden, riots broke out in the northern Stockholm suburb of Rinkeby. Dozens of youths clashed with police after they arrested a suspected drug dealer in Rinkeby. The rioters threw stones at police, burned cars and looted shops.

Published in Dawn, August 15th, 2018