A woman has thrown a shoe at the Israeli ambassador to Sweden as he was giving a lecture on Israel's forthcoming elections.

The shoe hit Benny Dagan in the chest during a seminar held at the University of Stockholm on Wednesday, a local police official said.

Ylva Kronheffer, a board member of the Stockholm Association of Foreign Affairs, the student association which organised the seminar, said she was "sitting in the front row and suddenly a shoe was flying over my head".

She added that another person threw two books at the envoy but missed.

"The girl who threw the shoe asked the policemen to give it back to her. It was a red Nike shoe," Kronheffer said.

The two protesters, who were shouting insults, were escorted out of the room by police.

They were taken to a local police station but were released after being questioned.

It was not known whether they were students at the university.

Dagan continued his lecture after a short break and a heated discussion followed the seminar before being interrupted by the moderator.

A protester who threw a shoe at Wen Jiabao, the Chinese premier, during a speech at Britain's Cambridge University earlier this week, was charged with a public order offence.

An Iraqi journalist who threw his shoes at George Bush, the former US president, during a press conference in Baghdad in December, was arrested and is awaiting his trial.