Teenage guns for hire- Swedish gangs targeting Israeli interests

Alex Maxia/BBCPolice arrested a 13-year-old after shots were fired in this quiet area of Gothenburg last weekThe 13-year-old boy should have been in school last Thursday, instead of sitting in a police station in central Gothenburg. But police say he fired shots outside the offices of Israeli tech firm Elbit Systems.
“He was basically caught in the act,” said police spokesman August Brandt, who said the shots were being investigated as an “attempted murder and weapons offence”.
Kalleback on the outskirts of Gothenburg is a fairly sleepy residential neighbourhood with upmarket developments, a supermarket and a few offices.
Nobody was hurt and little more is known about why a child might have opened fire on an otherwise quiet Thursday morning, outside an Israeli company that sells defence and homeland security solutions.
But this was no isolated incident. In fact there have been several this year.
Alex Maxia/BBCAugust Brandt of Swedish police said two officers were already at the scene when the shots were firedEarlier this month, Israel’s embassies were targeted both in Sweden and neighbouring Denmark.
First there was a shooting outside the Israeli embassy in Stockholm, then two Swedish teenagers aged 16 and 19 were arrested in Copenhagen after hand grenades were detonated near the embassy there.
Nobody was hurt, but Sweden's security service Sapo said immediately that Iran may have had a hand in both. Sapo head of operations Fredrik Hallstrom said Tehran’s involvement was an “objective hypothesis”.
ReutersTwo teenagers were detained after grenades went off outside Israel's Danish embassy earlier this monthMonths ago Sapo accused Iran of recruiting Swedish gang members to carry out attacks on Israeli or Jewish interests.
Iran’s foreign ministry condemned the allegations as “unfounded and biased” and based on what it labelled misinformation emanating from Israel.
Many of the suspects have been teenagers, and some as young as 13 and 14.
“To understand why we see young Swedish teenagers attacking Israeli companies and embassies we need to first acknowledge that we have had an ongoing gang conflict here in Sweden for a long time,” says Diamant Salihu, an investigative crime journalist with Swedish public service television SVT.
One of Sweden’s most violent criminal gangs, known as Foxtrot, has brought a wave of violence to the streets of Sweden, often involving teenagers tasked with criminal errands ranging from shooting at the door of a rival, to detonating explosives to contract killings.
That spiralled in 2023 when Foxtrot gang leader Rawa Majid entered into a deadly feud with Ismail Abdo, a former friend who had become leader of a rival gang known as Rumba.