Hundreds of protesters attacked the Swedish embassy in central Baghdad early today, climbing the fence and setting it on fire, protesting an expected burning of the Koran in Sweden.

Swedish Foreign Minister Tobias Billström said embassy staff were safe, but Iraqi authorities had failed in their responsibility to protect the embassy under the Vienna Convention.

“What happened is completely unacceptable and the government strongly condemns such attacks,” it said in a statement. “The government is in contact with Iraqi representatives at a high level to express our disappointment.”

For its part, Iraq has threatened to “sever diplomatic relations with Sweden” if there is another burning of a copy of the Koran, the office of Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammad Zia al-Sudani announced today, after protesters set fire to the Swedish embassy in Baghdad.

“The Iraqi government informed the Swedish government yesterday, through diplomatic channels, that it will move towards a break in diplomatic relations with Sweden in the event that there is another burning of the Koran,” warned the services of the Iraqi prime minister in a statement issued after a meeting he had with security officials.

Today’s demonstration was called by supporters of Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr to protest the second planned Koran burning in as many weeks, according to posts on a popular Telegram group linked to the influential cleric and other media outlets close to Sadr.

Sadr, one of the most powerful figures in Iraq, has hundreds of thousands of supporters, whom he has at times called into the streets, such as last summer when they seized the heavily fortified Green Belt and engaged in deadly clashes.

Finnish news agency STT reported that the Finnish embassy, ​​which is partly in the same cordoned-off area as the Swedish one, has also been evacuated, but staff are safe and sound.

Swedish police on Wednesday gave permission for a public rally to be held today outside the Iraqi embassy in Stockholm, the police permit shows, and two people are expected to attend.

Swedish news agency TT reported that the two men plan to burn the Koran and the Iraqi flag at the rally, and that one of them is a man who burned the Koran outside a Stockholm mosque in June.

Swedish police rejected several requests earlier this year for protests expected to include the burning of the Koran, citing security concerns. Courts have since overturned police decisions, saying the actions are protected by the country’s extensive freedom of expression laws.

A series of videos posted to the Telegram group One Baghdad show people gathering around the Swedish embassy at around 1.00am today, shouting pro-Sadr slogans and attacking the embassy compound around an hour later.

“Yes, yes to the Koran,” chanted the protesters.

Videos later showed smoke rising from a building in the embassy compound and protesters standing on its roof.

Baghdad

Iraq’s foreign ministry also condemned the attack and said in a statement that the Iraqi government had ordered security forces to conduct an “urgent investigation”, identify the perpetrators and bring them to justice.

By dawn, security forces were deployed inside the embassy and smoke was billowing from the building as firefighters put out stubborn fires, according to witnesses cited by Reuters.

Iraqi security forces later attacked dozens of protesters still roaming outside the embassy in an attempt to remove them from the area. Earlier, the protesters had briefly hurled stones and incendiary devices at the numerous security forces deployed at the scene.

Late last month, Sadr had called for protests against Sweden and called for the expulsion of the Swedish ambassador after an Iraqi man burned a Koran in Stockholm.

After the incident, the man was handed over to the police for rioting against an ethnic or national group. In a newspaper interview, he said he was an Iraqi refugee seeking to ban the Koran, Islam’s central religious text, which Muslims believe was revealed by God.

Two large protests took place outside the Swedish embassy in Baghdad after the Koran was burned that time, with protesters entering the embassy grounds on one occasion.

The governments of several Muslim countries, including Iraq, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, Jordan and Morocco, have issued protests over the incident, with Iraq seeking the man’s extradition to face trial there.

The United States also condemned the burning of the Koran, but added that Sweden’s granting of permission supports freedom of expression and is not an endorsement of the act.