Fourth asylum home on fire in west Sweden

                                          Firefighters at the scene on Tuesday. Photo: Björn Larsson/TT

                  Housing for asylum seekers near Munkedal in western Sweden is on fire, in the fourth suspected arson attack on refugee accommodation in just over a week.

Police in the area said that emergency services were called to the building just after 4am, with firefighters still working to put out the blaze five hours later.

             Anki Larsson, a deputy duty officer for the region’s police force, told the TT news agency that “no one has been injured” in what is suspected to have been a deliberate attack on the temporary asylum accommodation.

She added: "This has not started in any natural way."

           

               According to TT, police were planning to cordon off the area later on Tuesday and to send in forensic technicians to examine the possible cause of the fire.

The building has been providing beds for up to 20 refugees, with Swedish public broadcaster Sveriges Radio reporting that 14 people had been helped to safety during the night.

Officers around the country are still investigating a separate suspicious fire at an old school building earmarked for asylum accommodation in Onsala south of Gothenburg over the weekend, just days after another two hubs were burned to the ground in Ljungby and Arlöv in southern Sweden.

Six other fires at housing for refugees have been reported in 2015, although not all of them are understood to have been started deliberately.

             Umeå municipality in northern Sweden announced on Monday that it was not planning to disclose where it was set to house 150 asylum seekers out of fear of similar attacks.

"After the past week's fire incidents in southern Sweden I don't think it's okay to expose the addresses. The risk is that thugs decide to burn down the premises here as well," Ewa Klingfors, director of Umeå council's social services, told Västerbottens-kuriren.

With Sweden taking in record number of refugees, Sweden's Migration Agency (Migrationsverket) recently sent out a nationwide appeal for local councils and businesses to provide shelter as winter sets in.

            A total of 95,430 people have already launched asylum cases so far in 2015, according to Migrationsverket.

Source:The Local Sweden