Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson said Thursday the military will help police fight criminal gangs behind a surge in violence and killings.

"We are going to hunt down the gangs. We are going to defeat the gangs," Kristersson said in a televised address to the nation Thursday evening, after three people were killed overnight on Wednesday.

"An increasing number of children and completely innocent people are affected by this extreme violence," Kristersson said. "Sweden has never seen anything like this. No other country in Europe is seeing anything like this."

"Crime has reached unprecedented levels. The situation is very serious in Uppsala, and in the rest of the country," Uppsala police official Catarina Bowall told reporters.

The Scandinavian country has in recent years been in the grip of a bloody conflict between gangs fighting over arms and drug trafficking, which has escalated over vendettas between the gangs.

Apartment buildings and homes across the country are frequently rocked by explosions, while shootings, once limited to disadvantaged areas, have become regular occurrences in public places in the usually tranquil, wealthy country.

According to a tally by Swedish public television SVT, 12 people have been killed in shootings and explosions in September, the deadliest month in the past four years.

One of the dead was a 13-year-old boy whose body was found dumped in a wooded area. Prosecutors said they believed he was a victim of the gang violence.

WITH AFP