Since the conflict between Israel and Hamas flared anew two years ago, U.K. security officials have braced for the bloodshed to spread into local streets. On Thursday — Yom Kippur — the violence finally struck Britain’s Jewish community.
The attack on the Heaton Park Hebrew Congregation Synagogue in Manchester was the deadliest domestic terrorist attack since 2020. The assailant — identified by police as a 35-year-old British citizen of Syrian descent — drove a vehicle at the temple and then attacked worshipers with a knife, recalling a spate of car-ramming and stabbing attacks in 2017 and 2019.
While counterterrorism police have not explained Jihad Al-Shamie’s motives or his path to a fatal standoff with armed police this week, the incident has crystallized concern building in the British security services since Oct. 7, 2023. The risk that local residents — inspired by Hamas or radicalized over Israel’s military response in Gaza — would resort to violence has long been considered high in a country with deep links to the Middle Eastern conflict and the Israeli government.
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