The Swedish embassy in Baghdad was set on fire before dawn on Thursday during a demonstration organized by supporters of the turbulent religious leader Moqtada Sadr, noted an AFP correspondent, before a new event in Sweden where a copy of the Koran must be burned.
Smoke rose from the Swedish embassy building, the AFP correspondent noted from the roof of a building in the neighborhood, where Iraqi riot forces were deployed in large numbers while dozens of demonstrators were still there.
Several fire engines were also at the site to put out the blaze, he said.
It was not immediately possible to know whether the embassy was empty at the time of the attack and whether its staff had been evacuated.
Thursday night some demonstrators near the embassy brandished copies of the Koran, others portraits of Mohamed al-Sadr, an important religious cleric and the father of Moqtada Sadr, noted an AFP correspondent.
The attack on the embassy in Baghdad comes as Swedish police authorized a mini-rally in Stockholm on Thursday: the organizer, an Iraqi refugee in Sweden by the name of Salwan Momika, plans to burn a copy of the Koran and the Iraqi flag in front of the Iraqi embassy.
“We are mobilized today to denounce the fact of burning the Koran, which is only love and faith,” protester Hassan Ahmed told AFP. “We demand from the Swedish government and the Iraqi government that this type of initiative cease,” he insisted.
“We did not wait for the morning, we entered at dawn, we burned down the Swedish embassy,” said another young protester, before chanting “Moqtada Moqtada Moqtada” from the name of an influential religious leader.
Speaking on condition of anonymity, the demonstrator said that “the children of the sadrist current” had acted after the authorization given once again to Salwan Momika “to demonstrate to burn the Koran” in Sweden.
“Urgent investigation”
The Iraqi Foreign Ministry on Thursday condemned “in the harshest terms” the fire at the Swedish embassy in Baghdad, calling on the security forces to open an “urgent investigation”, according to a press release.
“The Iraqi government has instructed the relevant security services to carry out an urgent investigation and take all necessary measures to bring to light the circumstances of the incident and identify the perpetrators to hold them accountable in accordance with the law,” the statement said.
Salwan Momika, an Iraqi refugee in Sweden and organizer of the event scheduled for Thursday according to Swedish media, had already burned a few pages of a copy of the Koran on June 28 in front of the largest mosque in Stockholm during the day of Eid al-Adha, a holiday celebrated by Muslims around the world.
This first incident prompted supporters of Moqtada Sadr, an influential religious leader and troublemaker in Iraqi politics, to storm the Swedish embassy in Baghdad on 29 June.
They went in and stayed there for about a quarter of an hour before coming out.
At the time, Salwan Momika’s gesture in Stockholm provoked a flurry of international condemnation.
This type of act has already taken place in Sweden or in other European countries, sometimes at the initiative of far-right movements. They have led to demonstrations and diplomatic tensions in the past.