Swedish police are investigating a double shooting after two bodies were found in a burnt-out car rented by a British citizen.
The driver and passenger, who had driven across the Denmark-Sweden border into the southern city of Malmö, were shot on Sunday, according to the daily newspaper Aftonbladet.
The Toyota RAV4, which had been rented from Copenhagen airport, was subsequently set on fire in an industrial area of Malmö. The victims’ identities have not been disclosed.
A spokesperson for the UK Foreign Office said it is supporting the families of two British men reported missing in Sweden.
The car had been rented by a UK citizen and a Swedish forensic science team is working to identify the victims, Aftonbladet reported on Tuesday.
Kerstin Gossé of the Swedish police said the force is appealing for witnesses who saw a black Toyota car in the Fosie industrial estate where the shooting occurred.
She added: “We are interested in talking to people who have seen the car. It’s a black Danish-registered Toyota of model RAV4.
“We don’t think they are Danish citizens, that’s all we can say now … observations that you think could have something to do with this event during that timespan are of interest.”
Police declined to comment on whether the killings were linked to gang violence when questioned by the Swedish newspaper Expressen. Interpol has also been reportedly brought into the investigation as the victims had crossed international borders during their journey.
A Foreign Office spokesperson said: “We are supporting the families of two British men reported missing in Sweden and are in touch with the local authorities.”
Sweden has been in the grip of a conflict between gangs fighting over arms and drug-trafficking in recent years and has the second highest gun crime death rate in Europe after Albania.
Last September was the worst month for shooting deaths in the Scandinavian country since records began in 2016, after two people died in separate shootings, which brought the monthly total to 11.
In the first incident, an 18-year-old man was killed in the early evening at a busy sports ground in the south-west Stockholm suburb of Mälarhöjden. Later that night, a second man was shot dead in Jordbro, south of Stockholm.
In 2022, there were 391 shootings in Sweden, 62 of which were fatal.
The gun-murder rate in the capital Stockholm was roughly 30 times that of London on a per-capita basis in 2022.