AKIPRESS.COM - Iraq has expelled the Swedish ambassador only hours after Iraqi protesters angered by the burning of copies of the Quran in Sweden stormed the Swedish embassy in central Baghdad, scaling the walls of the compound and setting it on fire, Aljazeera reported.

The Iraqi prime minister, Mohammed Shia al-Sudani, also recalled his country’s charge d’affaires in Sweden, the government said on Thursday, and suspended the working permit of Swedish telecom company Ericsson on Iraqi soil, according to state media.

Early on Thursday morning, demonstrators at the embassy waved flags and signs showing the influential Iraqi Shia religious and political leader Muqtada al-Sadr, according to Al Jazeera’s Mahmoud Abdelwahed in Nasiriyah, southern Iraq.

The burning of the embassy was called by supporters of al-Sadr to protest against the second planned burning of a Quran in front of the Iraqi embassy in Stockholm on Thursday. While protesters in Sweden kicked and partially damaged a book they said was the Quran, they did not burn it as they had threatened to do.