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Swedish police station damaged in powerful explosion

Authorities said there were no injuries and nobody has been arrested.

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Sweden (Johan Nilsson/AP)

A powerful explosion outside a police station in southern Sweden has caused significant damage to the building.

Swedish authorities said there were no injuries and nobody has been arrested.

Police have not said what caused Wednesday’s pre-dawn blast at the police station in Helsingborg, but the country’s top police official, Dan Eliasson, called it “an attack against society”.

The explosion caused considerable damage to the police station’s entrance and shattered dozens of windows in nearby buildings.

No-one has claimed responsibility for the blast about 30 miles north of Malmo, Sweden’s third largest city.

A police officer stands guard outside a cordoned off area surrounding a police station in Helsingborg, Sweden (Johan Nilsson via TT News Agency via AP)
A police officer stands guard outside a cordoned-off area surrounding the police station in Helsingborg (Johan Nilsson via TT News Agency via AP)

Suburban feuds between criminal gangs fighting over territory have taken place in major Swedish cities in recent years.

The explosion was not immediately being investigated as terrorism.

Police spokesman Patric Heimbrand told a news conference: “It is fair to believe that this is a consequence of the good police work we do.

“We work in heavy criminal environments and some of them could be irritated. But to those I’d say that we cannot be influenced.”

Regional police chief Carina Persson told a news conference that prime minister Stefan Lofven had been informed of the blast.

She declined to comment on whether there could a link to a similar blast in November 2014 against a police station in Malmo which has not been solved.

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