The IKEA superstore near Stockholm which witnessed a double murder this week by Eritrean asylum seekers has responded by ending the sale of kitchen knives in-store, and the government has stepped up its policing at asylum-lodgings to defend against a backlash.

The response of the Swedish authorities to the ‘stabbings’ which killed what is reported to be a Swedish native mother and son shopping in the Västerås branch of IKEA – the largest in the country – has mystified some international observers.

Immediately after the attack by the newly arrived migrants, who shared a room in a government asylum shelter and had only arrived in the country less than four weeks before, Swedish police rushed to protect migrant communities from “dark forces in society”.

“Local police across the region have been tasked with taking these measures, to be there for safety purposes for everyone there – those who work there and those who live there,” Vastmanland police spokesman Per Agren said, as quoted by Reuters.

IKEA itself has now joined in with Västerås store manager telling local media that knives will be removed from shelves, a “temporary” move the chain presumably hopes will neuter the desire some in society feel to murder strangers.

After the stabbing on Monday, the store reopened this morning. News Agency AFP reports Swedish police have been “tight-lipped” over what precisely happened in the store, and have refused to confirm various claims in the local and global media, from the identity of the victims and perpetrators, the exact nature of the murder weapons, to whether it was a beheading. There are unconfirmed suggestions in the fringe press that the killers shouted “Allah Akbar” as they struck.

As reported by Breitbart News last year, IKEA stores are gun-free zones, with even uniformed police officers asked to leave premises by security guards for carrying firearms.

Department of Justice figures show over 500 people a year in the United States are murdered with ‘blunt objects’. Whether IKEA will now seek to take rolling pins and cast-iron frying pans off the shelves on the strength of this data is presently unknown.