Swedish embassy in Baghdad stormed and burned by Koran fire

BAGHDAD/STOCKHOLM, July 20 (Reuters) – Hundreds of protesters stormed the Swedish embassy in central Baghdad in the early hours of Thursday morning, scaling its walls and setting it on fire in protest of the expected burning of a Koran in Sweden.

All Baghdad embassy staff were safe, the press office of the Swedish Foreign Ministry said in a statement, condemning the attack and stressing the need for Iraqi authorities to protect diplomatic missions.

Thursday’s rally was called by supporters of Shiite cleric Muqtada Sadr to protest Sweden’s second planned burning of the Koran in weeks, according to posts on a popular Telegram group linked to the influential cleric and other pro-Sadr outlets.

Swedish news agency TT reported on Wednesday that Swedish police had granted a request for a public meeting outside the Iraqi embassy in Stockholm on Thursday.

The request says that the applicant seeks to burn the Quran and the Iraqi flag, TT reported.

Two people were arranged to take part in the demonstration, according to TT, adding that one of the people was the same person who set a Quran on fire outside a Stockholm mosque in June.

A series of videos posted to the One Baghdad Telegram group showed people gathered around the embassy around 1 a.m. Thursday (2200 GMT Wednesday) chanting pro-Sadr slogans and storming the embassy compound about an hour later.

“Yes, yes to the Koran,” the protesters chanted.

Subsequent videos showed smoke billowing from a building in the embassy complex and protesters standing on its roof. Reuters could not independently verify the authenticity of the videos.

KORAN PROTESTS

Iraq’s Foreign Ministry also condemned the incident, saying in a statement that the Iraqi government had instructed security forces to carry out a prompt investigation, identify the perpetrators and hold them to account.

By dawn on Thursday, security forces had been deployed inside the embassy and smoke was billowing from the building as firefighters extinguished unruly embers, according to Reuters witnesses.

Most of the protesters had withdrawn, with a few dozen milling around in front of the embassy.

Late last month, Sadr called for protests against Sweden and the expulsion of the Swedish ambassador after an Iraqi torched the Koran in Stockholm.

Swedish police charged the man with agitation against an ethnic or national group. In a newspaper interview, he described himself as an Iraqi refugee seeking to ban the Koran, Islam’s central religious text, which Muslims believe is a revelation from God.

Two large protests took place outside the Swedish embassy in Baghdad after the Quran burning, with protesters storming the embassy grounds on one occasion.

The governments of several Muslim countries, including Iraq, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, Jordan and Morocco, have issued protests over the incident, and Iraq is seeking the man’s extradition to stand trial in the country.

The United States also condemned it, but added that Sweden’s issuance of the permit supported free speech and did not endorse the action.

Reporting by Timur Azhari; Additional reporting by Anna Ringstrom in Stockholm; Written by Timur Azhari; Edited by Tom Hogue and Lincoln Feast

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