LAHORE MIRROR – In the early hours of Thursday morning, a group of enraged protesters in central Baghdad stormed the Swedish embassy, scaling its walls and setting it ablaze in response to the desecration of the Holy Quran in Sweden.
The Swedish foreign ministry press office stated that all embassy staff in Baghdad were safe, condemning the attack and urging Iraqi authorities to protect diplomatic missions.
The demonstration was called by supporters of influential cleric Muqtada Sadr, who were protesting the second planned Quran burning in Sweden within a few weeks. The call to protest was made through a popular Telegram group linked to the cleric and other pro-Sadr media. Muqtada Sadr is known for commanding a significant following and has previously called for protests, including the occupation of Baghdad’s heavily-fortified Green Zone, which resulted in deadly clashes last summer.
On Wednesday, the Swedish news agency TT reported that Swedish police granted an application for a public meeting outside the Iraqi embassy in Stockholm, where the applicant sought to burn the Quran and the Iraqi flag.
Videos posted on the Telegram group, One Baghdad, showed people gathering around the embassy at around 1 am on Thursday, chanting pro-Sadr slogans. Approximately an hour later, they stormed the embassy complex, chanting pro-Quran slogans. Later, videos showed smoke rising from a building in the embassy complex, with protesters standing on its roof. The authenticity of the videos could not be independently verified by Reuters.
The incident was swiftly condemned by Iraq’s foreign ministry, which instructed security forces to conduct a thorough investigation, identify the perpetrators, and hold them accountable. By dawn on Thursday, security forces had deployed inside the embassy, and firefighters were seen extinguishing stubborn embers as smoke rose from the building.
Last month, Muqtada Sadr called for protests against Sweden and the expulsion of the Swedish ambassador after the Quran burning in Stockholm by an Iraqi man. The Swedish police charged the man with agitation against an ethnic or national group, and he described himself as an Iraqi refugee seeking to ban the Quran.
Following that incident, two major protests occurred outside the Swedish embassy in Baghdad, with protesters breaching the embassy grounds on one occasion. Several Muslim countries, including Iraq, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, Jordan, and Morocco, expressed their protest about the Quran burning, with Iraq seeking the man’s extradition to face trial in the country.
The United States also condemned the desecration of Holy Quran but clarified that Sweden’s granting of the permit supported freedom of expression and did not endorse the action.
