Stockholm - Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt arrived Monday on an unannounced visit to Swedish troops based in Afghanistan, news reports said.

Sweden is this year to raise its some 400-strong force in northern Afghanistan to around 500.

Along with forces from neighbouring Finland, the Swedish forces are based in Mazar-e-Sharif in northern Afghanistan as part of the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF).

Stockholm - A Swedish prosecutor Monday called for a life sentence to be upheld against a German woman previously convicted for beating to death two young children in Sweden.

Christine Schuerrer was convicted in October of killing a three- year-old boy and one-year-old girl and injuring their mother in an attack on March 17, 2008.

Schuerrer, 32, was convicted without forensic evidence such as DNA or fingerprints linking her to the crime scene in Arboga, central Sweden.

"A life sentence is the only option," prosecutor Frieda Gummesson said in her closing statement, underlining that "exceptional" violence was used against the children and their mother.

Stockholm - Volvo Cars, the Swedish subsidiary of US carmaker Ford, is to assemble fewer cars in the coming two months, reports said Friday.

The decision by management of the Gothenburg-based carmaker was to avert a build-up of unsold vehicles, and production was estimated at 5,000 cars per month for January and February, the Goteborgs-Posten newspaper reported.

"It is still tough and we do not see any major turnaround of orders," Volvo Cars spokeswoman Maria Bohlin told the paper but she did not confirm the paper's production figure.

Stockholm - Mobile telephone maker Sony Ericsson on Friday reported a fourth-quarter loss and lower sales, describing the 2008 business year as "tumultuous" in the wake of the global economic downturn.

The group posted a pre-tax loss excluding restructuring costs of 133 million euros (174 million dollars) for the quarter, compared to a pre-tax profit of 501 million euros for the corresponding business period in 2007.

Restructuring costs in the quarter were 129 million euros.

Stockholm - Sweden, one of the major donors to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNWRA) that assists Palestininan refugees in the Gaza Strip and West Bank, on Thursday criticized the Israeli attack on the UN compound in Gaza.

"It is completely unacceptable that UNWRA, the UN's main humanitarian actor in Gaza is attacked in this manner," Swedish International Development Cooperation Minister Gunilla Carlsson said.

Reports suggested that the shells hit the compound earlier Thursday.

Stockholm - The ceremony to mark the bicentenary of the separation in 1809 of Finland and Sweden got under way in Stockholm Thursday in the presence of Swedish King Carl Gustaf and Finnish President Tarja Halonen.

The year 1809 has different connotations in the two countries - if remembered at all as a historic date, as several speakers and historians have observed.