In 2025 alone, the police have had around 100 cases involving hand grenades; in 66 of the cases they have detonated, reports Sveriges Radio Ekot.
"We have seen an increase in both the use of hand grenades in criminal violence and the demand for them," Malin Nygren, head of the National Bomb Data Center, told the radio.
In several of the cases where hand grenades have been used, people have been injured, including a mother and her preschool-aged child who were injured in April this year when a hand grenade was thrown into the room where they were sleeping south of Stockholm. The mother suffered life-threatening injuries and the girl was seriously injured. A month later, an elderly woman in Örebro was injured when a hand grenade was thrown into her bedroom.
In both cases, it was found that the hand grenades had been thrown into the wrong apartment.
The cases also involve hand grenades that were found before they could be used, for example in someone's home or during transport.
The hand grenades are said to have been smuggled into the country, but so far this year, Customs has not intercepted a single hand grenade at the border, reports Sveriges Radio.
"It is a failure. You will never get results from purely normal inspection work; you have to work in an intelligence-based manner and have information about who is doing these transports," Stefan Granath, deputy head of the inspection department at Swedish Customs, told SR.
