Hundreds of protesters stormed the Swedish embassy in Baghdad and set it on fire early Thursday, Reuters reported, citing witnesses and other sources, as recent episodes of Koran burnings in the European country have angered many in the Muslim world and drawn condemnation from Swedish authorities.
piece of A building identified as an embassy was shared on social media in flames And people with pieces Building in their hands. Images could not be immediately verified.
Reuters quoted a source as saying no embassy staff were harmed. Embassy officials did not immediately respond to requests for comment, the news agency said.
In June, after a man tore up and burned a Koran outside Stockholm’s central mosque on the first day of the Muslim holiday Eid al-Adha, hundreds of people in Iraq protested outside the Baghdad embassy at the urging of popular cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.
He called on the Iraqi government to break diplomatic ties with Sweden, calling it “hostile” to Islam.
Iran’s foreign minister, Hossein Amirabdollahian, said earlier this month that his country would prevent sending a new ambassador to Sweden in protest, Reuters reported. And Iran’s foreign ministry called Sweden’s charge d’affaires, condemning it as an insult to the most sacred Islamic values.
“Although the administrative procedures to appoint a new ambassador to Sweden have ended, the process of sending him has been suspended as the Swedish government issues a license to desecrate the Holy Quran,” Mr Amirabdollahian said on Twitter.
Egypt called for the burning of the Koran “Disgraceful actAnd Saudi Arabia said “Hateful and repeated acts cannot be condoned with any justification.” of Malaysia Foreign Minister He said the desecration of the holy book during major holidays was “offensive to Muslims worldwide”.
Swedish police charged the man who burned the Koran with agitation against an ethnic or national group. In a newspaper interview, he describes himself as an Iraqi refugee and wants to ban it.
Thursday’s protest was called by Mr al-Sadr’s supporters, ahead of another expected burning of a Muslim holy book in Sweden.
A series of videos posted by Channel One Baghdad, a popular Telegram channel supporting Mr. al-Sadr, showed people gathering around the embassy around 1 a.m. local time and storming the embassy complex about an hour later, Reuters reported.
Later, videos showed smoke rising from a building in the embassy complex, the news agency said. Reuters said it was not immediately clear if anyone was inside the embassy at the time.
In January, someone set fire to a Koran near the Turkish embassy in Stockholm, and right-wing journalist and anti-Islam agitator Rasmus Paludan, a dual Danish-Swedish citizen with ties to Kremlin-backed media, later confirmed he had paid for permission to hold the protest. But he denied that he would not pay anyone to burn the holy book.
Swedish police have rejected several recent petitions for anti-Quran demonstrations, with courts overturning those decisions, saying they violated freedom of speech.
Amid Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Turkey cited desecration of the Koran as it stalled Sweden’s bid to join NATO, which requires the approval of all members.
“We condemn in the strongest terms this vile attack on our holy book,” Turkey’s foreign ministry said in a statement in January.
Sweden’s foreign minister, Tobias Billström, described the Islamophobic incitement as “horrendous”.
Turkey appeared to relent on Sweden’s NATO bid this month, although Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan later said the final decision rested with its parliament and Sweden needed to take more steps to win the country’s support.
