About 62,000 people are active or have connections with criminal networks in Sweden, the police said.
Authorities in Sweden have struggled for years to curb violence linked to organized crime.
Deadly shootings have more than tripled in the past decade in the Nordic nation of 10 million people, and are now more common than in neighboring countries.
“We have identified 14,000 people as active in criminal networks. Moving on to people who are connected to those networks, we estimate that there are 48,000 such people,” said National Police Commissioner Petra Lund.
Swedish Justice Minister Gunnar Stromer stated that in 2022, 62 fatal shootings took place in Sweden.
“In 2023, although the number of fatal shootings has declined slightly, preliminary figures show that Sweden had nine times more fatal shootings than Norway, Denmark and Finland combined,” Stromer said.
At the same time, the number of explosive attacks is the highest so far, he added.
There were 11 fatal shootings in September last year and it was marked as the deadliest month in Sweden since 2019.
