Faced with an unprecedented escalation of violence and “gang warfare” to control drug trafficking, traditionally peaceful Sweden has recently been confronted.

In September alone, 12 people died in attacks – shootings and explosions – linked to migrant gangs.

According to the Associated Press, these gangs often recruit teenagers from poor immigrant neighborhoods to carry out their attacks.

Yesterday, Thursday, two men were shot in separate incidents near Stockholm, while a 25-year-old woman was killed in a bomb attack near Uppsala.

These were also the incidents that broke the glass, now forcing her government to seriously consider putting the army on the streets to support the police in their work.

“Sweden has never seen anything like this before, no other country in Europe has seen anything like this,” he said Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Christerson in his televised speech yesterday, Thursday. “We will hunt down the gangs and defeat them,” he stressed.

“Crime has risen to a level we have never seen before. The situation is serious in Uppsala and throughout the country,” said Katarina Boval, spokesperson for the Uppsala police.

“Criminal conflicts in Sweden pose a serious threat to the country’s security. Innocents are murdered, injured. We are doing everything possible within the ranks of the police and together with others to stop this development,” said national police director Anders Thornberg.

Police estimate that nearly 30,000 people in Sweden are directly involved in or have ties to gang crime. Violence has also spread from large urban areas to smaller towns where violent crime was once rare.

The armed forces in the fight against violence and stricter measures of repression

The Swedish Prime Minister accused a “irresponsible immigration policy‘ and ‘failed integration’, along with ‘political naivety’, for the rise in gang violence, but said Sweden would now take a different approach to tackling the issue.

Today will be Friday meeting with the supreme commander of the armed forces and the chief of policein an attempt to suppress the violence.

“Everything is on the table, both under current law and laws that need to be changed quickly,” Christerson said.

He added that Sweden would seek to introduce further measures such as more surveillance, search zones and prison sentences.