Antisemitic ambulance attack: what we know so far – The Latest

0:00Nosheen Iqbal:This is The Guardian.

0:09You got questions about Chicago? Me too. I'm Erin Allen, host of the Curious City podcast, where each week I answer your questions about the region. From mysteries like, is this building haunted? To questions like, what happens to birds that get stuck inside O 'Hare Airport? We get into the answers every Wednesday. Then on Thursdays, come back for a deeper dive where we pull a thread from Wednesday's questions to uncover even more surprising and hidden layers. Listen to Curious City wherever you get your podcasts.

0:46Enormous explosions. They smashed windows in the local flats and singed carpets.

0:51Nosheen Iqbal:Today's a dark day for London. This is an anti-Semitic hate crime. There has been a lot of feverish reporting. We're hearing a lot about this new group. It could be that they were behind this Golders Green attack. It could be that they're just claiming they're behind this Golders Green attack. It could be that they have nothing to do with it whatsoever. All the anti-Semitic attacks we've had, they really do go to the heart of the community. They really do impact on people. It creates anger and fear and division. It's very difficult. Counter-terrorism police are investigating an arson attack on four ambulances owned by a Jewish charity in London.

1:24Nosheen Iqbal:Reports suggest that it could be linked to Iran. What do we know so far? From The Guardian's Today in Focus, this is the latest with me, Noshin Iqbal. Joining me today is The Guardian's chief reporter, Dan Boffey. Dan, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you. Now, we're here today to talk about this incident which occurred in the early hours of Monday morning in which four ambulances belonging to the Jewish charity Hatsola Northwest were set ablaze in Golders Green in North London. Police are investigating it, as are the security services. Dan, what do we know about exactly what happened? Quite a bit, because we have CCTV footage of the incident.

2:04So we know that at 1.45am Monday, that three hooded people approached the four ambulances, which were parked by the synagogue, the Mazik Adhar synagogue on Highfield Road in in Golders Green. They appear to have poured accelerant on rags, placed them strategically around the four ambulances and then done a runner as they lit them. Whether it was professional, I'm not sure, because they did seem quite alarmed by the speed at which the ambulances set alight. And what we had from there was enormous explosions because the oxygen cylinders exploded to the extent that it smashed windows in the local flats and singed carpets and created quite the drama.

2:45Nosheen Iqbal:So counter-terror police are investigating it, but they haven't actually designated it a terrorist incident as of yet. But there has been a lot of feverish reporting. We're hearing a lot about this new group. And I'll just check my notes. They're called Harakat al-Shab al-Yamin al-Islamiyah or Hai. And there's a lot of talk about how this alleged Islamist sleeper cell has actually been behind this attack and several others in Europe in recent weeks. Now, as far as we can see, the police and the evidence have dismissed the claims as disinformation. British security services have yet to confirm the group's claims as being credible.

3:21Nosheen Iqbal:Dan, what do we know, if anything, about what this group is and where it's come from? I mean, quite little, because they only seem to emerge on the 9th of March, when there was an explosion outside a synagogue in Liege in Belgium. the authorities seem sort of quite confident that hai as i'll call them were involved in that in that the video footage they produced of it came very quickly out the claim that they're iran linked comes from the fact that they disseminate their their videos and their claims on pro-iranian shia militia telegram channels pro-iranian regime channels and it's because the speed at which in certain incidences where they've been linked they're able to get video out and you know these attacks are happening in the early hours of the morning and they're getting video out very very quickly in some occasions right that people feel confident okay this organization seems to have some kind of real-time link to these operations but then there are other operations where it seems where they've made claims i think there are seven now incidents around europe where they've made claims which look very spurious i mean one in greece we're not even sure there was any incidents at all.

4:30The Greek authorities don't seem to know about an incident involving an anti-Semitic attack. But this organisation says, yep, we've done this. So anyway, they've come out, they have a Telegram channel, they have a logo.

4:41Nosheen Iqbal:So they've established themselves on Telegram, which is a messaging app. Yeah, I mean, that's all we know they really have. It could be that they were behind this Golders Green attack. It could be that they're just claiming they're behind this Golders Green attack. It could be that they have nothing to do with it whatsoever, but still somehow Iran or the planners in Tehran are somehow behind it. It's often the case, we've had at least 20 Iranian-backed plots foiled by the security services in the UK since 2024. And it's often proxies, it's sort of organized crime groups of people who are some distance away from Iran itself, not necessarily Iranian, who are involved in this.

5:23So with the responsibility of claims and responsibility, but you've really got to be very, it's very difficult to absolutely tie them together.

5:28Nosheen Iqbal:And what kind of claims are we talking about? What would these proxies be doing? What kind of things have been foiled? Well, all the seven claims that I'm aware of, they're very similar. So the explosions outside synagogues, explosions outside Jewish schools, and as we have in Golders Green, these ambulances. No one's been hurt in any of them. They're all very dramatic, all very destabilising for the local communities, but no one's been killed. The warnings that these organizations have given is stay away from Zionist organizations. British people stay away from these areas. So try to create a distance, I suppose, within British society.

6:06Try to create division.

6:07Nosheen Iqbal:Right. And Dan, I mean, as we've established, there's not a lot of evidence at this point. So I'm sort of loathe to speculate further. But what we do know is that this was a targeted arson attack in one of the country's biggest Jewish communities. It is an anti-Semitic hate crime. It's deliberate. It's frightening. And, you know, as you say, it terrifies the people who are living there. And I wonder if you've spoken to residents and just to give us an understanding of how people are feeling and responding. Yeah, I know Gold and Green very well. My school's not too far from there. I worked in the McDonald's, Golders Green, after school on the weekends.

6:45So I know Golders Green very well. And like many parts of London, when horrible things like this happen, you'll see no difference on the streets. It makes no difference. People carry on their lives. But this sort of thing is extremely troubling. All the anti-Semitic attacks we've had in recent years, they really do go to the heart of the community. They really do impact on people. I have lots of friends from the Jewish community who, really only the first time in their lives in recent years they've seen this they've had blood red written across synagogues and it makes you feel extremely vulnerable and this one particularly because it is violent act, okay no one was hurt but it's very dramatic, someone could easily have been hurt they had absolutely, clearly those behind it had no compunction about safety, they weren't too worried if someone was hurt so yes, extremely troubling You don't see it, obviously, but people will lose sleep over this.

7:43Nosheen Iqbal:And of course, all of this is happening while Israel is fighting wars in Iran, in Lebanon. The situation in Gaza is far from over and resolved. And while those conflicts feel quite far away from some, London is a global city and those tensions are playing out here. And lots of communities now feel very vulnerable. And I just want to know how you think or have seen how it's affecting community cohesion. Yeah. I mean, it's horrible. is we shouldn't even really be talking about these two things in the same breath, you know, what Israel's doing in Iran and what's happening to the Jewish. But it's inevitable that we do, because tensions are heightened.

8:19It does create tensions between communities. You know, what happens around the world does have that impact. And this is just particularly toxic. That's the horrible consequences of things like this. It creates anger and fear and division. It's very difficult.

8:33Nosheen Iqbal:And Dan, as you say, a lot of these communities do feel vulnerable. You know, they're not monoliths, don't all have the same opinions and views and politics. And, you know, it has become cliche to say that we're living in febrile times, but we really are. Anti-Semitism is on the rise. Islamophobia is on the rise. Racism, you know, the rise of the far right, full stop. It's incredibly sort of difficult to process. There is a massive protest planned in London to counter all of that this weekend. As our chief reporter, how do you go about assessing the political temperature of the country and how do you think these issues may resolve?

9:11I think all journalists can do is talk to people, constantly talk to people, try to understand and explain and get across their views and bring a critical mind to everything that people say and do as to how the tensions in this country are really resolved. I mean, we're a small part of a huge problem at the moment and it all feels quite depressing and demoralising. It's very difficult to be writing this sort of stuff constantly. It's horrible to see groups, community groups, who have lived side by side, jowl by jowl, so wonderfully well, sort of suddenly at each other's throats. And yeah, the solution, God knows.

9:49Nosheen Iqbal:Dan, thank you so much for your time. Thank you. That's it for today. My huge thanks again to Dan Boffy. Thanks for listening to this episode of The Latest. Today in Focus, we'll be back with you as usual tomorrow morning and we'll be back tomorrow night. In the meantime, I would highly recommend listening to Off Duty, which is a new seven-part series from Guardian Investigates with reporter Melissa Segura. In 2011, a Chicago police officer was murdered. Police identified four suspects. Three confessed, but the fourth refused to break. He embarked on a 12-year battle to prove his innocence against a system that refused to admit it might be wrong.

10:29Nosheen Iqbal:Subscribe to the Guardian Investigates feed or listen wherever you get your podcasts. This episode was presented by me, Noshin Iqbal. The producers were Bryony Moore and Nicola Alexandru. The senior producer was Ryan Ramgobin and the lead producer was Zoe Hitch.

10:50Nosheen Iqbal:This is The Guardian.

11:00You got questions about Chicago? Me too. I'm Erin Allen, host of the Curious City podcast, where each week I answer your questions about the region. From mysteries like, is this building haunted? To questions like, what happens to birds that get stuck inside O 'Hare Airport? We get into the answers every Wednesday. Then on Thursdays, come back for a deeper dive where we pull a thread from Wednesday's questions to uncover even more surprising and hidden layers. Listen to Curious City wherever you get your podcasts.