Stockholm, Oct 2 (IANS): Several Swedish websites including those of banks and armed forces were attacked Monday, causing their servers to crash.

"We managed to shut the server down for a while but now the attack is back on again," Xinhua quoted Swedbank spokesperson Anna Sundbland as saying.

Another Swedish bank, SEB also suffered major disruption, while the ticket-booking system of Swedish Railways was out of order for over one hour due to the attack.

The Swedish News Agency TT was also attacked, their internet server records showed that so-called "ddos attack" originated from hijacked computers worldwide linked to "botnet".

Websites of the Swedish armed forces and other authorities came under attack for the second time in nearly a month.

The military suspected the attack was launched by someone who showed sympathy for Julian Assange, the founder of Wikileaks who is accused of rape by Swedish prosecutors.

According to Anders Ahlqvist, IT expert from Swedish National Police Board, there was a "clear" connection between Monday's attack and the dispute over Assange's extradition.