August 14th London Attack First Since 2017
On Tuesday morning, a person yet to be identified, used a Ford Fiesta vehicle to ram bicyclists and pedestrians outside Parliament in London. Two people were hospitalized with non-life-threatening injuries.
The suspect in this morning’s attack in London was described as in his late 20s, was arrested on terror offenses, and is reportedly not cooperating with police. It is very likely the first terror attack in London in 2018 and it follows the pattern of previous ISIS-inspired vehicle attacks in the United Kingdom. Very sadly, the United Kingdom was witness to several terror attacks in 2017. In March of 2017, Islamic State (ISIS)-inspired British-born Khalid Masood, 52, rammed a car into pedestrians on Westminster Bridge, killing four people, and then stabbed and killed a police officer outside of Parliament. Masood was shot and killed by police. Some 45 other innocent people were injured in Masood’s vehicle attack. In May of 2017, a Briton of Libyan ancestry, Salman Ramadan Abedi, 22, inspired by ISIS, carried out the deadly Manchester Arena suicide bombing after an Ariana Grande concert. Twenty-three people were killed along with the attacker, and 139 were wounded, more than half of them children. The Manchester Bombing attack was the worst terrorist attack on British soil since the July 2005 London bus and metro bombings.
Then in June, a trio of ISIS-inspired terrorists, Pakistani-born Khuram Shazad Butt, 27, Moroccan Rachid Redouane, 30, and Morrocan-born Youssef Zaghba, 22, used a van to attack pedestrians on London Bridge and then in the Borough Market. The terrorists got out of the van and the stabbed and hacked at people with edged weapons before being killed by police. Eight innocent people were killed along with the three attackers and 48 others wounded. Several weeks later in June of 2017, British-born Darren Osborne, 47, a self-radicalized White Supremacist, drove into people walking near Finsbury Park Mosque in London. One person was killed, and 11 others injured in the attack. In August, two police officers were injured in a terrorist attack, when ISIS-inspired, British-born Mohiussunnath Chowdhury, 27, attacked them with a sword outside of Buckingham Palace. In September of 2017, ISIS-inspired Iraqi refugee Ahmed Hassan, 18, carried out a bomb attack on a train in Parsons Green station. At least 22 people were injured in the attack.
It should be noted, in all 2017 attacks, except the Finsbury Mosque Attack, that all terrorists were inspired by ISIS and most, by all accounts, were self-radicalized. Most of the ISIS-inspired attackers were under the age of 30, except for of the Westminster Bridge attacker, Khalid Masood. Khalid Masood, and the Finsbury Mosque attacker, Darren Osborne, were radicalized later in life, Masood by Islam, Osborne by White Supremacist-inspired racism. The 2017 attacks included two bomb, three vehicle, and three edged- weapon attacks. The Manchester bombing resulted in more than half the fatalities at 24, out of a total of 42. The remainder of fatalities resulted from the vehicle attacks combined in two cases with edged-weapon assaults. Again, the bombings in Manchester and at Parsons Green caused the bulk of the wounded at 161 injured out of a total of 267 from all terror attacks, and with vehicle and edged weapon attacks responsible for 106 people wounded.
In summary, this morning’s apparent vehicle attack would seem to demonstrate that increased British security measures taken since the deadly events of 2017, and the collapse abroad of ISIS in Syria and Iraq, has led to a reduction in attacks of all kinds and significant reduction in casualties. Only two arrests have taken place in thwarted terror attacks, one by a White Supremacist on an LGBT parade and the other by an ISIS-inspired youth planning attacks on tourist locations in London. Here to hoping, that the successful British counter-terrorism measures and trends continue.
