An organised crime group is believed to be behind an explosion that blew the doors off a police station in Sweden.

The blast, in the early hours of Wednesday, caused severe damage to the main police offices in Helsingborg and houses opposite.

Images showed glass scattered across a wide area, doors missing and the roof above the entrance in pieces.

Several people were in the building at the time but none were injured in the explosion.

No one has claimed responsibility for the blast but terrorism is believed to have been ruled out.


Helsingborg police officer Kenneth Andersson was in the station when the explosion occurred.

He told Helsingborgs Dagblad newspaper: "I don't know how to describe it. It was a really hot detonation, a powerful bang.

"The alarm went off and we...checked to make sure nobody was injured and evacuated the building."

Image: Forensics staff work at the scene after the blast

A witness, calling himself Damian, heard the bang and felt the pressure wave from his home in Dalhem.

"The entrance was completely demolished, the roof of the entrance was jumbled up, a steel beam was bent and there was also another steel beam further away," he told the newspaper.

"All the windows on the houses were smashed."

Police chief Patric Heimbrand described the bombing against the station as an attack on both the judiciary and his staff, adding that he believed the police's work against organised crime was one possible motive.

He said: "It is fair to believe that this is a consequence of the good police work we do.

"We work in heavy criminal environments and some of them could be irritated. But to those I'd say that we cannot be influenced."

Meanwhile, the country's top police official, Dan Eliasson, described the blast as "an attack against society".

Regional police chief Carina Persson declined to comment on whether there could any links to a similar, unsolved blast on 30 November, 2014, against a police station in Malmo.