Protesters storm Sweden’s Embassy in Baghdad over Quran-burning protests in Stockholm | Watch video

Due to demonstrations over the burning of the Quran in Stockholm, demonstrators stormed Sweden’s embassy in Baghdad.

Supporters of Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr have broken into the Swedish embassy in Baghdad for the second time in less than a month. This appears to be a direct reaction to the Swedish government’s permission for a protest that would involve the burning of Qurans outside the Iraqi embassy in Stockholm.

According to reports, no embassy staff had been harmed and declined to elaborate further.

One Baghdad, a well-known Telegram channel that backs Sadr, shared a number of videos showing protestors assembling around the embassy at about midnight on Thursday (2200 GMT on Wednesday) and storming the embassy complex an hour later. Later pictures showed smoke emanating from one of the embassy complex’s buildings.

According to media reports, authorities in Stockholm have given the go-ahead for a rally outside the Iraqi embassy, where another Quran-burning protest is scheduled.

After an Iraqi man burned a copy of the Quran outside a mosque in Stockholm late last month, Sadr called for demonstrations against Sweden and the expulsion of the Swedish ambassador.

In the wake of that Quran burning, there were two significant demonstrations in front of the Swedish embassy in Baghdad, during which demonstrators breached the embassy’s grounds once but did not get inside the embassy building itself.

Several Muslim nations’ governments, including those of Iraq, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, Jordan, and Morocco, have spoken out against the occurrence.

Although it emphasized that granting the permit encouraged freedom of expression rather than endorsing the activity, the United States has condemned it nonetheless.