Two people have died in explosions in Sweden in recent years. Given how many bombs have detonated, around 500 between 2023 and 2025, it is a mystery that more people have not been injured or killed, according to Malin Nygren, head of the national bomb data center.
"That we don't have more injuries or deaths in blast-related violence is completely inexplicable," she says during a media seminar on blasts.
Neither researchers nor the police can understand how there could not be more injuries given how these objects are used and in what environment, and not least the time of day.
Severe injuries
The police have been able to establish in their own statistics that 26 people have been injured in the past three years in “explosions in a criminal context.” Nygren emphasizes that the figure must be taken with great caution as the police are not tasked with keeping such statistics, and it is likely that there are more.
Alexander Wallenius, head of investigation at the police's national operations center, says that the injuries cover "the whole range", from minor shrapnel wounds to severed limbs.
So it's a wide range where some could be fatal. Other injuries might be right on the border between a physical injury and just a very frightening experience.
Between 2018 and 2023, the bombs mainly used civilian detonators and explosives. However, leakage from the civilian market to criminals has been largely stopped, according to the police, through, among other things, legislative changes, increased oversight and awareness.
Is it possible that we won't see these giant bombs in the future?
You can never rule out anything, but we have greatly reduced the possibility and made several actors in the chain aware of what they can influence, she says.
Pyrotechnics
In recent years, the networks have instead mainly used hand grenades, smuggled in from abroad, and pyrotechnics. These too can be fatal, both for the person handling them and for anyone nearby when the bomb detonates.
Alexander Wallenius, who emphasizes that more and more bombings are now being stopped in the preparation phase, says that the explosions have enormous consequences even if no one is injured.
Blasting a gate affects everyone who lives there and perhaps the entire surrounding area.
In one case, a 15-year-old boy in Östberga in southern Stockholm is believed to have died when an explosive device he was supposed to place detonated in September last year.
In the second case, a young woman died while sleeping when a bomb containing about 13 kilograms of dynamite detonated outside her home in a residential area in Fullerö in Uppsala Municipality in the fall of 2023.
According to police statistics, which should be interpreted with great caution, 26 people were injured in the years 2023–2025: 7 were injured in 2023, 7 in 2024, and 12 were injured in 2025.
