Using vehicles as weapons of terror in Europe, America
NEW YORK: A pickup driver ploughed a truck into cyclists and pedestrians in New York on Tuesday, killing eight people in the first deadly “act of terror” in the city since September 11, 2001. Vehicles have previously been used as weapons of terror, often by supporters of the Islamic State (IS) group, attacking nations in the US-led coalition fighting the jihadists in Iraq and Syria.
Barcelona’s Las Ramblas On August 17, a driver deliberately runs a van into crowds on Barcelona’s popular Las Ramblas Boulevard, in what police say is a “terrorist attack”. It is followed hours later by a car attack in the seaside resort town of Cambrils. Fifteen people are killed in the carnage. All members of the terror cell behind the attacks are either killed or arrested by Spanish police.
Charlottesville
On August 12, at a far-right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, a 32-year-old woman is killed and others injured when a car rammed, deliberately according to eyewitnesses, into a crowd of counter-protesters.
London targeted
On March 22, 2017, a 52-year-old British convert to Islam, Khalid Masood, mows down pedestrians on Westminster Bridge near parliament and stabs a policeman, killing five people and injuring around 50 before being shot dead by police. The attack is claimed by IS. On June 3, the British capital is hit again when three attackers strike pedestrians with a van and go on a stabbing spree wearing fake suicide vests in bars in the London Bridge area. Eight people are killed before the assailants are shot dead by police. The attack is also claimed by IS. On June 19, a van drives into a crowd of Muslim worshippers near a mosque in London’s Finsbury Park area. One man dies and another 11 people are injured. A 47-year-old man is arrested and charged with terrorism-related murder and attempted murder.
Nice attack, Champs-Elysees hit On July 14, 2016, Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel, a 31-year-old Tunisian, ploughs a 19-tonne truck into a Bastille Day crowd, killing 86 people on the famous beachfront avenue. IS later claims Bouhlel as one of its followers. On June 19, 2017, Adam Dzaziri, a 31-year-old who had sworn allegiance to the IS, is killed when he rams a car loaded with guns and a gas canister into a police van on Paris’s Champs-Elysees. No one else is injured. On August 19, 2017, a 36-yearold Algerian man, named as Hamou B., drives a BMW into a group of soldiers outside a barracks in the western Paris suburb of Levallois-Perret, injuring six. After a car chase, police shoot and wound the suspect.
Stockholm shopping street An April 7, 2017, a truck attack in the Swedish capital kills five people, including an 11-year-old Swedish girl, a Briton, and one Belgian. Fifteen others are injured. —AFP