The woman, who was discovered in her home several days after the attack with heavy bleedings from her genitals, says in an interview with Swedish Radio that she 'couldn't help but ask them to stop  maybe it was stupid of me but I just couldn't stand watching them torture a small animal'.

On November 12, she was just on her way to the local grocery store in central Helsingborg to buy coffee when she was confronted with the horrific scene.

'When I went outside I heard something howling just like a small child crying. I continued a few steps and saw a few men standing in front of me. I realized that they were beating a small dog, a black one with a white chest.'

As the 87-year-old grandmother asked the men, who were 'speaking a language that she couldn't understand', to stop what they were doing and told them that 'they should be ashamed of themselves', they immediately responded by knocking her down to the ground.

'One of them came up to me and hit me on the right side of of my head and I fell to the ground. One of the others forced my legs down and then they started kicking me while I was lying down.'

The gang focused most of their kicks on the 87-year-old's lower abdomen and private parts.

'I thought they were going to break my legs because they were bending them apart while kicking straight ahead.'

Helsingborg, which was once an idyllic and sleepy industrial town in the heart of Sweden's southernmost province, has gone through a rapid transformation to the worse during the last few decades. It is now plagued by a surge in gang-related crime and a deteriorating social situation.

In other parts of what politicians hail as the 'New Sweden', too, elderly people are on a daily basis reminded of the fact that the safe and friendly country of their youth may be gone forever.

In an eerily similar case in Gothenburg in March this year, a 61-year-old pensioner was beaten so savagely that he fell into a coma. His crime? Trying to protect his dog from being harassed by an immigrant gang outside a supermarket in Kortedala.

The 87-year-old victim of this week's attack apparently still had some hope for her fellow citizens  despite the turn society has taken.

'I've heard about all the rapes and all this misery, but  I am an old woman', she told Swedish Radio.