It was just before midnight, on the night to Monday, that the rescue service was alerted to the burning row house in Tumba in Botkyrka municipality.
The streets, usually trafficked by children on tricycles and stray cats, quickly filled with blue lights.
It blew up and started burning like crazy, says an older man who lives opposite the affected house.
The police suspect an explosion and believe that there is a crime behind it.
The area's row houses otherwise resemble those in the TV series "Svensson Svensson". The neighborhood is described by all who live nearby as usually quiet.
Young children and pensioners
Beside the police cordons, there are lawns with newly set spring flowers and children's toys scattered around.
Except for the affected house, which is partially black after the fire, it is only the presence of police and journalists, as well as a lingering smell of fire, that reminds of the night's events.
The fire department managed to put out the fire in a couple of hours, but the mother and one of the children living in the residence are still being treated at the hospital for severe injuries.
Pensioner Marie-Louise has lived in the area since it was built in the 1980s and tells that something similar has never happened there. Like many others, she woke up to the bang.
Then I felt the smoke from the fire coming into the bedroom through the vent.
Her impression of the row houses' quiet is confirmed by a young mother who wants to remain anonymous.
It's a nice area to live in, she says.
Pain in the mother's heart
That it was a woman of her age, around 35, and her child who were injured makes "pain in the mother's heart", she says. Everyone knows everyone and keeps an eye on each other, at least in the houses that border her own, a bit away from the affected one.
I'm grateful for that. But of course, you never know what people are up to, she says, referring to media reports that the suspected perpetrator attacked the wrong house – and that the act was directed at someone at a different address.
The information has not been confirmed by the police.
