STOCKHOLM: Swedish police launched a manhunt on Thursday after the third arson attack against a mosque in a week, amid growing tensions over the rise of a far right anti-immigration movement.

“People saw a man throwing something burning at the building,” police in Uppsala said in a statement, adding that the mosque in eastern Sweden did not catch fire and that the suspect had left behind “a text on the door expressing contempt for religion”.

A police spokesman told Swedish news agency TT that the burning object was a Molotov cocktail and that no one was in the building at the time.

Also read: Swedish protesters denounce mosque arson attack

Sweden’s Islamic Association posted a photograph online of the main door of the mosque, which was emblazoned with the slogan “Go home Muslim s...”.

The police were alerted by passers-by, who reportedly witnessed the attack.

“The crime has been classed as attempted arson, vandalism and incitement to hatred,” the police said, appealing for witnesses to come forward.

Thursday’s attack in Sweden’s fourth-largest city came just three days after a late-night blaze at a mosque in Esloev in the south, which police suspected was also arson.

On Christmas Day, five people were injured when a petrol bomb was thrown through the window of a mosque in Eskilstuna, east of the capital Stockholm.

Sweden’s leftist Prime Minister Stefan Loefven led condemnation of the latest attack. “The most important thing now is that everyone distances themselves from this,” he told TT.

“In Sweden no one should have to be afraid when they practice their religion,” he added, saying the government would increase funding for securing places of worship.

According to the anti-racism magazine Expo, there have been at least a dozen confirmed attacks on mosques in Sweden in the last year and a far larger number are believed to have gone unreported.

“People are afraid, they fear for their safety,” Mohammad Kharraki a spokesman for Sweden’s Islamic Association said. “We’ve seen through history that people use violence as a way of polarising society against minorities.”

The attacks come as debate intensifies in Sweden over immigration and the integration of asylum seekers in the traditionally tolerant Nordic country, which is expected to receive more than 100,000 asylum applications this year, breaking all previous records.

Published in Dawn, January 2nd, 2015