'Al Qaeda group' claims Swedish Iraq poll attack

STOCKHOLM - A failed fire bomb attack on a polling station in Stockholm used for Iraq's parliamentary election has been claimed by a group which says it has links to al Qaeda, newspapers said today.

Bottles of petrol were thrown at the polling station for Iraqi immigrants in the northern Stockholm suburb of Kista in the early hours of Thursday local time, but did not ignite.

Newspapers Aftonbladet and Dagens Nyheter said on their websites they had received a letter from a group which said it was part of the al Qaeda network and which said it had carried out the failed attack.

The letter was postmarked December 14, the day before the attack, Dagens Nyheter said. No name was given for the group.

Sweden, which is neutral and has not supported the US-led war in Iraq, has suffered no attacks and has not previously had any known al Qaeda groups on its territory.

Swedish radio quoted a security expert, Magnus Torrell from the Swedish Defence Research Agency, as saying he did not believe there were any al Qaeda groups in Sweden.

Osama bin Laden also once singled out Sweden as the kind of country al Qaeda does not attack.

The voting centre attacked was one of several in Stockholm for the thousands of Iraqis who live in Sweden, many of whom fled Iraq during Saddam Hussein's rule.

The police said they had issued a nationwide alert after the attack and searched for the assailants using tracker dogs.

- REUTERS