Sweden’s intelligence service said Friday that the investigation into a foiled attack on the Israeli embassy in Stockholm this week was being probed as a potential “terrorist crime.”
Police were called to the embassy on Wednesday after a “dangerous object” was discovered on its grounds, which the national bomb squad destroyed after determining it was “live”.
Police declined to comment on the precise nature of the object, but media have reported it was a hand grenade.
“The preliminary investigation launched by the Swedish Police Authority on January 31, following the discovery of a dangerous object at the Israeli Embassy in Stockholm, has been taken over by the Swedish Security Service,” the service said in a statement.
“In connection with this, the criminal classification has been changed to a terrorist crime,” it added.
Swedish tabloid Aftonbladet, which reported that the object was a hand grenade, said it had been thrown over the fence surrounding the mission and had landed on the ground near the building.
Israeli ambassador to Sweden Ziv Nevo Kulman said in a post to X that the embassy had been “subject to an attempted attack.”
“We will not be intimidated by terror,” Kulman added.
Minister for Justice Gunnar Strommer told AFP that the new classification “demonstrates the seriousness of the incident.”
“An attempted attack on an embassy is an attack on those who work there and also on our free and open society,” Strommer said in an emailed statement.
Strommer added that police had intensified the surveillance of the embassy and other locations related to Israeli and Jewish interests.
Sweden’s government in late October pledged 10 million kronor ($1 million) to increase security at Jewish institutions and congregations, following increased anti-Semitism in the wake of the Israel-Hamas war.
In early December, Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson took part in a march against anti-Semitism in Stockholm.
Swedish police said at the time they had received 120 reports of anti-Semitic crimes since the outbreak of the war.
Following the October 7 attack on Israel by Hamas, which resulted in the deaths of around 1,160 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official figures, its military launched a withering air, land and sea offensive.
It has killed at least 27,019 people in Gaza, most of them women and children, according to the territory’s health ministry.
