Police announced today that they have increased security around sites of Israeli interest as well as Jewish community interests in Sweden, following overnight shootings near the Israeli embassy in central Stockholm.

“Due to the suspicious shootings near the Israeli embassy in Stockholm, police are taking security measures (to protect) Israeli and Jewish property and interests across the country,” the law enforcement agency said on its website.

A Swedish police patrol heard gunshots around 2 a.m. Friday near the Israeli diplomatic mission. He cordoned off the area and conducted a series of searches in various Stockholm neighborhoods in the early hours of this morning. An investigation was launched into a serious breach of arms laws.

Police made several arrests, they said in a statement, but the prosecutor in charge of the investigation, Marika Hope, said in a statement that no pretrial detention was taking place.

“We are closely following the ongoing Swedish investigation into the shooting in front of the Israeli embassy in Stockholm,” Israel’s ambassador to Sweden, Ziv Nevo Kuhlman, wrote on social media platform X.

“We thank the Swedish authorities for their immediate response and investigation, as well as for strengthening security measures around our embassy and around the Jewish communities.”

Police are refusing to say whether the shooting was aimed at the Israeli embassy.

In February, Swedish police found a device “probably activated” inside the embassy, ​​and Israel’s ambassador said it was an attempted attack. The Swedish intelligence service (Säpo) had launched an investigation into a “terrorist crime”.