What used to be a home is now a mess of wood, insulation and cladding, littering neighbouring gardens and spilling into the street. Windows are completely blown and only jagged shards of glass remain. Curtains and clothes are strewn about, propelled by the sheer force of an explosion.
“It is like a war scene,” says a local resident, “something you see on the news from Afghanistan.”
But this is not a conflict zone. It is a previously peaceful district of prosperous Uppsala, Sweden’s fourth-largest city, now the centre of the country’s gangs crisis. Soha Saad, a 24-year-old newly qualified teacher, died in the blast on September 28. The attack was not aimed at her, but at a neighbour believed to be a relative of a criminal gang member.