The Ministry of Foreign Affairs recommends “extreme attention and caution” when traveling to Sweden after the Swedish government’s decision to raise the terrorist alert level. The ministry has updated its travel recommendations after the Swedish authorities on Thursday raised the terrorist threat level to the second highest due to several factors, including protests by several Muslim countries over the recent burning of the Koran in this Scandinavian country. .
The threat, for the first time in seven years, goes from the third to the fourth level on a scale of five, which means that it is now “high”, although the Swedish intelligence services denied that there are specific suspicions and spoke of a joint analysis.
Consequently, the Travel Recommendations page of the Foreign Affairs website has changed this Friday, after the Swedish authorities consider that their country “has gone from being a ‘legitimate’ terrorist target to being a ‘priority’ target, with an increase in the possibilities of attacks” in it. For this reason, the department headed by José Manuel Albares on duty advises “extreme attention and caution, especially in places with a large influx of people” and take into account the embassy’s Consular Emergency telephone number “in case of a threat or terrorist attack “.
The page also warns of the alert issued by the Swedish authorities about “extreme weather episodes in some areas of the country, with the possibility of heavy rains and floods.” The third potential risk issue in Sweden is citizen and criminal security since, according to Foreign Affairs, the country “has surprisingly high crime rates.”
Thus, he points out that robberies are being recorded more and more frequently in tourist areas, which is why it is necessary to “be careful with personal belongings” in points such as the historic center of Stockholm, the railway and metro stations, and the buses that connect the airports with the main cities.
In addition, it warns that some peripheral areas of large cities such as Stockholm and Malmö have been “the scene of criminal or vandal acts” and have “increased in recent times the frequency of shootings between criminal gangs.” For this reason, the website of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs describes the periphery and industrial areas of large cities such as Stockholm, Gothenburg and Malmö as “risk areas to be avoided”.