By Rebeca Crespo
Since January 7, 2015, when twelve people were killed in the attack on the satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo and four more were gunned down in a Jewish store in France, until today, with the recent murder of a sacristan in Algeciras (Cadiz), dozens of Islamist attacks have shocked the Western world.
The following is the chronology of the Islamist attacks that, during the last years, the West has suffered and have caused more than 300 dead and hundreds of wounded of different gravity.
ISLAMIST ATTACKS IN EUROPE:
- January 2023, Spain: a Moroccan Islamist murders a sacristan and injures at least four people in an attack on several churches in Algeciras (Cadiz).
- January 2023, France: a Libyan stabs six people in a Paris train station, shouting, “Allah is great”.
- September 2022, Germany: A man stabs two people in Ansbach while shouting Allah is excellent before being shot dead.
- June 2022, Norway: an Islamist kills two people and injures 21, ten critically, at an LGBTI venue in Oslo’s capital.
- May 2022, France: Mohamed L. stabs, while shouting Allah is great, ten times in a father’s throat in Marseille as he was leaving to pick up his children from a Catholic school. The victim, Alban Gervaise, 40, died days later in hospital due to his wounds.
- November 2021, Germany: a Syrian man attacks a high-speed train traveling between the southern German cities of Regensburg and Nuremberg with a knife, seriously injuring three people.
- October 2021, Norway: an Islamist who was already being “watched” by the police kills five people with a bow in Kongsberg. Two other people were injured in the attack.
- September 2021, Spain: a Moroccan man drives his car into two terraces in Torre Pacheco (Murcia), killing one of the diners and injuring four others.
- April 2021, France: an Islamist slits the throat of a 49-year-old police officer at the police station in Rambouillet, located about 60 km southwest of Paris, while shouting, “Allah is great”.
- March 2021, Sweden: an Afghan man wounds eight people with a knife in the town of Vetlanda.
- October 2020, France: 18-year-old Islamist beheads teacher Samuel Paty after he taught cartoons about Muhammad in class.
- November 2019, United Kingdom: a Pakistani-born terrorist kills two people and injures five others in an attack on London Bridge. The Islamist had already been in prison, convicted of a terrorism-related offense. He had been at large for a year under electronic monitoring when he committed the attack.
- May 2018, Belgium: Islamist executes two female police officers in Liege, kills a civilian, and injures four others while shouting Allah is great.
- March 2018, France: hostage-taking by a lone wolf loyal to the Islamic State in a supermarket in Trèbes (southern France). He ended the lives of three civilians and a gendarme before being shot down by law enforcement.
- October 2017, France: the Daesh terrorist group takes responsibility for the murder of two women with a knife at the Sait-Charles station in Marseille, southeastern France. The Islamist had already been arrested days earlier in Lyon for robbing a shop.
- August 2017, Finland: an 18-year-old Moroccan jihadist stabs two people to death and injures six others in a central area of Turku.
- August 2017, Spain: two attacks in less than 12 hours. At least 15 died, and over a hundred were injured in the attack on Las Ramblas in Barcelona. Hours later, five terrorists are gunned down after running over several people on the Cambrils seafront promenade.
- July 2017, Germany: a man, who, according to German media, entered the country as a refugee, attacked several customers at a supermarket in the German city of Hamburg with a knife on July 28. One dead and six injured.
- June 2017, United Kingdom: just days before the general election, two attacks were recorded on June 4 in London, in which seven people were killed, and 50 others were injured. Among the dead was Spaniard Ignacio Echeverria, who confronted the three attackers with his skateboard.
- May 2017, United Kingdom: Salman Abedi, a British man of Libyan origin whose parents are refugees, blows himself up at an Ariana Grande concert in Manchester, leaving 22 dead and around 60 injured.
- April 2017, France: one police officer was killed and two injured after Karim Cheurfi attacked a patrol car in the center of the Gallic capital.
- In April 2017, in Sweden, a jihadist killed four people in Stockholm after being hit by a truck.
- March 2017, United Kingdom: Khalid Masood murders five people and leaves 49 injured near Westminster in London.
- December 2016, Germany: a terrorist runs over and kills 12 people who were at a Christmas market in Berlin with a truck.
- October 2016, Belgium: former Belgian soldier Hicham D. stabs two police officers in Brussels. Armed with a Swiss military knife, the assailant is an old acquaintance of the authorities for his contacts with returnees from Syria and Iraq.
- August 2016, France: a 60-year-old Jewish citizen is stabbed 500 meters from the Main Synagogue in Strasbourg. Despite authorities being quick to point out that the attacker was an individual with impaired mental faculties, the victim – who managed to save his life – explained that he had shouted Islamist slogans.
- July 2016, France: two jihadists attack the church of St.-Etienne-du-Rouvray and take hostage a priest, two nuns, and several faithful attending the celebration of Holy Mass. Shortly afterward, they slit the throat of the 84-year-old priest Jacques Hamel before being shot by the police. The Islamic State claimed and celebrated the attack.
- July 2016, Germany: a 27-year-old Syrian asylum seeker is killed when he detonates an explosive device and injures at least 15 people – 3 of them in severe condition – in the town of Ansbach. He sought to perpetrate a massacre on the orders of the Islamic State.
- July 2016, Germany: a 17-year-old Afghan refugee injures four people, three of them seriously, on a regional train with an axe and a knife. The Islamic State, through one of its media terminals, claims the attack.
- July 2016, France: when France was considering lifting the State of Emergency declared by the authorities due to the jihadist threat, the radical Islamist Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel ran over 85 people with a truck in Nice and left 12 others in critical condition.
- June 2016, France: 25-year-old jihadist Larossi Abdalla stabs two police officers to death. The terrorist released a video via social media confirming his allegiance to the Islamic State.
- March 2016, Belgium: a double attack at the airport and metro leaves 32 fatalities. The perpetrators were part of the same cell that had attacked months earlier in Paris.
- November 2015, France: the most significant terrorist attack on French soil. In Paris, two jihadists immolated themselves near the Saint-Denis Stadium, and another group assaulted the Bataclan nightclub leaving 130 dead and more than 300 wounded.
- June 2015, France: Hervé Cornara is beheaded by one of his employees, Muslim Yassin Salhi, who hung his head on the factory’s fence, threatening to blow up.
- April 2015, France: jihadist Ahmed Ghlam is arrested for killing a woman and preparing an imminent attack on a church in Villejuif.
- February 2015, Denmark: two people are stabbed to death by a jihadist at a cultural center where blasphemy and Islam were being discussed and at a synagogue.
- January 2015, France: twelve people are killed in the attack on the satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo, and four more are killed at the Jewish store that jihadist Amedy Coulibaly took over in Porte de Vincennes.
ISLAMIST ATTACKS IN THE UNITED STATES, CANADA, AND AUSTRALIA
- August 2022, USA: Indian-origin British writer Salman Rushdie suffers a stabbing attack in which he loses sight in one eye for having “attacked Islam” in his novel The Satanic Verses, published in 1989.
- January 2022, USA: Malik Faisal Akram kidnaps four people inside a Colleyville synagogue near Dallas to demand the release of Aafia Siddiqui, a Pakistani woman suspected of links to al-Qaeda who is in federal prison in Texas.
- October 2017, USA: ISIS-inspired Islamist runs his van into a crowd in lower Manhattan, killing eight people on the 31st.
- June 2017, Australia: an ISIS follower takes two people hostage, in a departmental area south of Melbourne, killing one of them. Upon leaving the scene, the attacker shoots at police officers outside, leaving three wounded.
- April 2017, Australia: two teenagers, inspired by Islamic State, attack a gas station and murder a 29-year-old man who worked there. The attack took place in the town of Queanbeyan on April 7.
- October 2016, Canada: Michael Zehaf-Bibeau, a Canadian convert to Islam, shoots dead the soldier standing guard at the Memorial.
- August 2016, Australia: a 21-year-old British woman and another 30-year-old compatriot are attacked by a French Islamist shouting Allah is great! The young woman died from stab wounds, and the other victim suffered severe injuries.
- June 2016, United States: Omar Mateen murders 49 people in Orlando and injures 53 others. The young man had undergone a process of radicalization and had linked himself to ISIS.
- December 2015, United States: Syed Rizwan Farook and his wife, Tashfeen Malik, attack a regional cultural center with long guns in San Bernardino (California). They murdered 14 people and left 22 seriously injured. Before committing the attack, they had sworn allegiance to the Islamic State, which claimed responsibility for the terrorist action shortly afterward.
- July 2015, United States: four Marines are killed in Chattanooga (Tennessee) by Mohamad Youssef Abdulazeez, linked to ISIS, who is eventually killed by US Army security services.
- May 2015, United States: two ISIS-linked terrorists attack an American Freedom Defense Initiative exhibit of caricatures and images of the Prophet Muhammad, causing a dozen injuries. Police shot down the two terrorists.
With information from LGI