Over the course of one night last year, three people were killed in separate attacks across Sweden - three of many violent attacks to rock the country in 2023.

The first victim was an 18-year-old man who was shot dead in a Stockholm suburb on September 27. Just hours later, one man was killed and another was wounded in a shooting in Jordbro, south of the city.

Then, as if two killings weren't enough, Soha Saad - a 24-year-old kindergarten teacher living with her brother and parents - died in an explosion in Uppsala, west of Stockholm, in the early hours of September 28.

In the aftermath, one neighbour described the blast as being 'like a war scene' and 'something you see on the news from Afghanistan.'

The violence meted out across the region in those 12 hours made international headlines, but to many living in Sweden - did not come as a surprise.

In a series of interviews, Swedish academics, a politician and a high ranking police officer have spoken to MailOnline about the multi-faceted crisis, describing a nation at crisis point that is ill equipped to tackle the scale of the violence.

Deadly violence linked to feuds between criminal gangs has escalated in recent years against the backdrop of high levels of migration into the country.

Meanwhile, Sweden's share of non-western population grew from 2 percent to 15 percent in just 20 years.

Mafia groups abroad have called the country a 'haven' for their activities, while organised crime groups have infiltrated business sectors and found ways to smuggle military-grade weapons into the country.

In response, Swedish police have been given new powers - such as the ability to declare 'visitation' or 'safe zones' in which officers have more temporary powers to increase their presence, and to search people, homes and vehicles.

But many, including within the government, have gone as far to call on a full closure of Sweden's borders to asylum seekers.

The killings have turned Sweden, seen for many years from the outside as a peaceful Scandinavian welfare state, into the European Union's gun-homicide capital.

Gangsters carry out personal vendettas against each other - or hire youngsters to do their dirty work. Almost half the suspects in the gun-related murders in 2022 were aged between 15 and 20 - youngsters who have been groomed by gangs that are, statistics show, largely run by second-generation immigrants.

Young hitmen have admitted to being hired to shoot and kill rivals, being paid as much as a million krona (around £73,000) to do so, or as little as a few thousand.

Experts say the violence has been driven by a number of factors: Turf wars between gangs, a growing drugs market, an influx of guns into the market, growing inequality, high level of immigration and also a failure of migrant integration into society.