In advance of the scheduled burning of a Quran in Sweden, protesters set fire to Sweden’s embassy in the Iraqi capital Baghdad early on Thursday, according to an AFP correspondent. An AFP journalist said that the Swedish embassy building was emitting smoke, there were still dozens of protesters there, and there were several Iraqi riot police present.
Supporters of the controversial religious figure Moqtada Sadr organized the demonstration. A teenage protester in Baghdad told AFP on Thursday that “we didn’t wait until morning, we broke in at dawn and set fire to the Swedish embassy,” before shouting the name of the leader.
Whether the embassy was vacant during the assault or whether workers had fled was not immediately known. The event was not immediately addressed by Iraqi officials.
The attack comes after Swedish authorities approved a gathering outside the Iraqi embassy in Stockholm on Thursday. There, organizers planned to burn the Iraqi flag and a copy of the Quran.
Salwan Momika, an Iraqi immigrant living in Sweden, was reportedly the event’s organizer, according to Swedish media. On June 28, on the Muslim festival of Eid al-Adha, Salwan torched a few pages of a copy of the Quran in front of Stockholm’s main mosque.
The next day, Moqtada’s followers stormed the Swedish embassy in Baghdad in response to that event. Moqtada is a well-known religious figure and political dissident in Iraq.
