Sweden: riots continue for 4th day

Neighborhood watch groups started patrolling the streets in some suburbs of Stockholm on Wednesday night as police failed to control rioting by young people in Husby, Jakobsberg, Hagsatra, Skarholmenset and other neighborhoods for a fourth day.

Cars were burned in at least 15 suburbs and a police station was set on fire on Wednesday, the Wall Street Journal reported. In one neighborhood, rioters threw rocks at firefighters arriving to put out a fire that was set at a restaurant.

Police said at least 90 fires broke out during Wednesday night.

Hundreds of young people have set fires, damaged buildings and thrown rocks at police in Stockholm’s immigrant neighborhoods since Sunday to protest the shooting death of a 69-year-old mentally ill man in Husby, USA Today reported. Swedish officials said he attacked police with a machete as they tried to search his house.

Ten people have been arrested so far.

More from GlobalPost: Stockholm riots rage for 3rd day after police shooting

The suburbs where the rioting is taking place are populated by immigrants from Iraq, Iran, Turkey and Somalia and have high unemployment. Many suspect the real reason for the riots is frustration with a perceived lack of opportunities for immigrants in Sweden.

"In segregated areas, many are disappointed about their future prospects," Eva Andersson, co-author of Segregation and Urban Unrest in Sweden, a new study by the universities of Stockholm and Uppsala, told USA Today. "You don't perceive the society as supportive, rather the opposite."

Many immigrants who live in the surburbs are appalled by the youth uprising.

"It's idiotic – they're ruining things for the people that live here," Lebanon-born Husby resident Marianne Farede told the Swedish news websiteThe Local, according to USA Today. "We're the ones that suffer. It's our cars that are getting burned; it's our money."

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