NEW YORK — Europe has once again been devastated by a terrorist attack utilizing jihadist tactics tested by Palestinian terrorists in Israel.
The New York Times reported on the timeline of Saturday’s London attack in which seven people were murdered and dozens more injured near the London Bridge and Borough Market:
• In the attack, the men drove a vehicle on to the sidewalk on London Bridge, striking several pedestrians, around 10 p.m. local time, according to London’s Metropolitan Police Service.
• The police said the vehicle left London Bridge and drove to nearby Borough Market, where the suspects got out and began stabbing people, including an on-duty British Transport Police officer who was responding to the scene at London Bridge. The police said he received serious but not life-threatening injuries.
• The police said they shot and killed the three male suspects in Borough Market within eight minutes of receiving the first reports of an incident on London Bridge.
This is at least the third deadly car-ramming attack in Europe in the last year.
December saw the Berlin Christmas market massacre in which a heavy truck plowed into pedestrians at a market.
That incident mirrored an attack in Nice, France last July in which a 31-year-old Tunisian national ploughed a cargo truck into crowds of civilians celebrating Bastille Day, killing 85 people and injuring 434. The Daily Mail reported a “huge cache of guns, grenades and ‘larger weapons’ were later found inside the lorry.” The newspaper cited witnesses who said that after plowing through the crowd in Nice, the gunman jumped out of the truck and opened fire before being shot dead near the scene.
In these incidents and yesterday’s attack in London, the assailants seem to have taken a page out of the Palestinian jihadist playbook of vehicular terrorism. For several years now, Palestinian terrorists have deployed the same deadly tactic of plowing vehicles into pedestrians and then attempting to continue their assaults with stabbings or shootings.
As I reported after the Bastille Day jihad attack:
Such vehicular attacks and attempted attacks have become almost a routine throughout the most recent so-called Palestinian wave of terror targeting Israelis for over a year now.
Moreover, Palestinians have been utilizing the bloody tactic for at least eight years, with assailants at times using heavy vehicles such as tractors.
One attack that mirrors Thursday’s carnage in Nice was a December 2015 car-ramming in which a Palestinian plowed his vehicle into a large group of people at the entrance to Jerusalem, wounding fourteen, including an infant. The terrorist, in that case, was shot and killed and an axe was discovered in his car, meaning he likely intended to exit the vehicle and continue his onslaught.
Meanwhile, in March, a Palestinian teen attempted to ram Israelis with a vehicle outside the Etzion Junction in the West Bank.
Last October, three Israeli officers were wounded when a Palestinian driver plowed his car into them and was shot dead.
As far back as July 2008, a Palestinian terrorist driving a large construction vehicle plowed into cars and pedestrians in central Jerusalem, killing three people and wounding more than 40.
Three weeks later, a Palestinian tractor driver rammed into an Israeli public bus and five cars, wounding 15 people.
Two months later, a Palestinian from eastern Jerusalem deliberately drove his BMW into a crowd near the Old City, wounding 17.
In August 2014, a Palestinian drove a tractor into a bus in central Jerusalem, wounding six victims.
Aaron Klein is Breitbart’s Jerusalem bureau chief and senior investigative reporter. He is a New York Times bestselling author and hosts the popular weekend talk radio program, “Aaron Klein Investigative Radio.” Follow him on Twitter @AaronKleinShow. Follow him on Facebook.