Terror em Londres

Terror ataca Londres, 11 anos após atentados de Julho 

 DEBKAfile Exclusive Relatório de 04 de agosto de 2016, 12:01 (EDT)

Uma mulher de 60 anos foi esfaqueada até a morte na noite de quarta, 3 de julho, em um ataque na Praça Russell de Londres por um homem de 19 anos, que feriu outras seis pessoas antes que a polícia trouxe-o com uma arma de choque elétrico Taser. O local perto da Universidade de Londres e do Museu Britânico, não muito longe de Oxford Street, era perto das cenas dos ataques de 7 de julho onze anos atrás, quando bombardeiros islâmicos matou 52 pessoas e feriu mais de 700 no trilho metrô de Londres e um ônibus.

"As primeiras indicações sugerem que a saúde mental é um fator significativo, neste caso, e que é uma grande linha de investigação," London Metropolitan Police Comissário Assistente Mark Rowley disse a repórteres. "Mas é claro ... o terrorismo como uma motivação permanece, mas uma linha de investigação para nós para explorar", disse Rowley, que é oficial anti-terrorismo mais antigo da Grã-Bretanha.

Que é uma importante linha de investigação foi demonstrada pela ação da polícia na quinta de manhã para isolar Russell Square e muito do West End de Londres.

O assassino, descrito por testemunhas como usando um capacete de moto e atacando pessoas ao acaso,

atingiu menos de 24 horas após o anúncio da polícia metropolitana de Londres de um extra de 600 atiradores armados para as ruas de Londres contra a ameaça terrorista. Eles atacam pode muito bem ser lido como um aviso de que tais precauções seria inútil na prevenção de um ataque jihadista na capital britânica.

Enquanto segurando a identidade do assassino, britânicos esquadrões anti-terroristas são, sem dúvida, procurando a sua residência e em outros locais ligados à sua família e amigos.

Tuesday night, shortly before the attack, DEBKAfile carried this report.

Armed police prepare to deploy from Hyde Park, central London, after Scotland Yard announced Wednesday, Aug. 3 that the biggest police force in Britain is to put its first 600 additional armed officers on public patrols on the main streets and landmarks of London, as part of its anti-terrorism plans.

Metropolitan Police chief Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe said that, following the terror attacks in Europe, more marksmen were trained and operationally ready for public patrol up to a total of 1,500 firearms officers.

Although British cops are proud of traditionally not carrying firearms, the Met chief said "I think people understand that where you are going to have people as enemies who've got guns, we've got to have guns.”

Already, he added, “They pass through airports where we have armed officers, they pass through railway stations where they see firearms, and in some of our big iconic locations, we've already got armed patrols - if you look at Parliament, Downing Street - so it's not entirely new.”

DEBKAfile’s exclusive counterterrorism sources can name the men behind the upsurge of Islamic terror violence in West Europe last month: the Nice attack on July 14, which left 84 dead; the suicide bombing in Ansbach in Bavaria, Germany, on July 24, which left 15 people injured, and the murder of a French priest at a suburban church in Normandy on July 26.

They are two Frenchmen: Amn al-Kharji (ISIS codename: Abu Sulayman al-Faransi), who is head of the Islamic State’s secretive external operations wing and, under his command, Fabien Clain (ISIS codename: Salim Benghalem), a convert to Islam who heads European terror operations.

It was Benghalem who picked the targets of the Paris raids last November 2015, which left 132 people dead and hundreds wounded, and the Nice truck bombing, which murdered 84 victims on July 14, Bastille Day.

This week, he orchestrated the first known jihadist attack on a Christian place of prayer in Europe after instigating the first ISIS attacks in Germany.

Up until recently, Western intelligence services used ISIS as the generic term for any jihadist attacks in a European city, be it Brussels, Istanbul, Nice, Munich, Wurzburg or Ansbach. But no high-profile ISIS executives were ever named, for fear of impairing their efforts to plant agents or informers inside the murderous organization’s operational ranks in Europe and the Middle East.

These efforts have so far got nowhere. These two top maser-terrorists have been agile enough to stay a step or two ahead of Western counterterrorism agencies. The weeks and months ahead are therefore likely to see more terror outrages at unknown locations, executed with assorted weaponry by unforeseen methods.

Europe is therefore on high terror alert, braced for more jihadist attacks. And the streets of London will see armed cops on patrol.