Danish Police Hold Three Swedes After Blasts Near Israel Embassy
(Bloomberg) -- Danish police detained three Swedish nationals related to two blasts close to Israel’s embassy in Copenhagen and are investigating whether the incident is connected to a shooting near the Israeli diplomatic mission in Stockholm.
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The three detainees are 15 to 20 years old, adding to a string of recent cases where young Swedes have committed crimes in Denmark. One of the suspects was detained close to the scene of the blasts early Wednesday, while the other two were apprehended on a train heading for the southern Danish border city of Padborg, police inspector Jens Jespersen said at a press conference.
The explosions were caused by hand grenades, which damaged a building that’s not the embassy, the inspector said. No one was hurt in the blasts.
“We can’t say with certainty whether the embassy has or has not been the target of the explosions,” he told reporters. “It’s still part of our investigation.”
Police currently expect to charge two of the detainees with illegal possession of weapons, and not with terrorism.
Separately, Swedish police confirmed that there had been a shooting near the Israeli embassy in Stockholm, after officers responded to reports of gunfire in the area late Tuesday afternoon. No one was hurt and no suspect has been detained.
The area is well covered by surveillance cameras and investigators are currently going through the evidence, a spokesperson for the Stockholm police said.
Jespersen from the Danish police said the Stockholm incident is “of course part of our investigation” and that “it’s only natural to investigate whether we can connect the two incidents.”
The incidents come as attacks in the Middle East escalate. Iran fired about 200 ballistic missiles at Israel on Tuesday in a reprisal after Israel carried out a dramatic series of attacks on Lebanon in recent days, killing Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in a Beirut airstrike and sending ground forces across the border.
In a statement posted on Facebook, Israel’s embassy in Copenhagen said it was “shocked” at the explosions, and expressed confidence in Danish police’s efforts to investigate the event.
Sweden’s Security Service has earlier said that criminal gangs have been used as proxies by Iran to attack Israeli interests in the country, following two previous attempts at attacking the embassy. Authorities also said last month that the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps was behind a hacking operation aimed at deepening divisions in the Nordic country by sending thousands of inflammatory text messages.
The Iranian embassy in Stockholm has dismissed all allegations of involvement in attacks in Sweden as “false” and “baseless.”
--With assistance from Christopher Jungstedt and Charles Daly.
(Adds details about the suspects and broader investigating from first paragraph)
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