Turkish restaurant in the Swedish city of Gothenburg was targeted in an attack, reports said Saturday.
The attack, carried out with an improvised explosive device (IED) took place at 2 a.m. on Saturday, restaurant owner Ismail Yücel told the Anadolu Agency.
Yücel said he learned about the attack after a restaurant worker who lives near the area heard about an explosion and called him.
“When we arrived at the restaurant police had cordoned off the area and were carrying out an investigation,” Yücel said.
He noted that the masked assailants created the IED through the internet, then broke the windows of a theater nearby then threw it inside the restaurant.
No injuries have been reported as the restaurant was closed at the time, but there is material damage inside the compound, Yücel said.
Sweden is a strong draw for many migrants and about 15 percent of its population was born abroad. An estimated 100,000 Turks live in the Nordic country.
There has been an increase in the number of attacks targeting Muslims.
In June, a Muslim prayer room inside a hospital in the same city was targeted in an Islamophobic attack.
Last September, a mosque in the southern Swedish city of Orebro was burned to the ground in an arson attack. In December, an Islamic Cultural Center in the southern city of Saffle was the target of a homemade bomb attack.
Anti-Muslim hatred has been on the rise in Europe for years. Far-right extremism and xenophobia have fueled anti-Muslim hatred in Western countries, where terrorist attacks by Daesh and al-Qaida are used as an excuse to legitimize those views. This trend of intolerance has triggered deadly attacks against Muslims and immigrants since then. With growing racism emerging as a serious problem in almost all EU states, citizens of foreign origin are more vulnerable in some countries.
Source: DS
