Synagogue ‘had been staked out weeks before ambulance attack’

Iranian group claims responsibility

From the Telegraph

…when local volunteers saw suspicious-looking characters hanging around outside the Machzike Hadath Synagogue in Highfield Road recently, they immediately intensified security.

It seems their suspicions were well founded.

In the early hours of Monday, three men wearing hoodies to hide their features crept up to the synagogue and firebombed four ambulances owned and run by a Jewish charity.

The scale of the threat against Jewish people in Britain today is such that the streets of Golders Green – where there are more than 30 synagogues – are bristling with security cameras.

At 1.36am, three men, dressed in dark clothing, with hoods up, approached the ambulances, which are owned by Hatzola Northwest, a Jewish charity that provides free emergency medical care and hospital transfers.

One of the men appeared to be carrying a jerry can or bucket, thought to contain a flammable accelerant.

He then seemed to dip a cloth into the liquid before disappearing from view behind the ambulance.

Seconds later, a bright flash pierced the darkness as the fire took hold, and the three suspects could be seen fleeing in the same direction from which they came.

The whole incident took less than 30 seconds from start to finish, but it has sent shock waves throughout the local community, where almost half of the residents identify as Jewish.

Damon Hoff, 58, the president of Machzike Hadath Synagogue, said his community had feared this day would come.

He told The Telegraph: “After Manchester, we just said: ‘When is it coming to London?’ This is London now. The streets are not safe for us. Humanity is strong here. We are resilient, but this is our time of need. . . Ambulances are the centrepiece of decency, they treat everyone. The synagogue is a place of worship. This is not a political place.”

Just hours after the attack, and with the wreckage of the vehicles still smouldering, suspicion about the attack had already begun to fall firmly on Iran.

A new militant group called Harakat Ashab al-Yamin al-Islamiyya, the Islamic Movement of the Companions of the Right, claimed responsibility.

In recent weeks, the newly formed group claims to have carried out similar style attacks on Jewish targets in the Netherlands, Belgium and Greece.

Little is known about the organisation, and security sources suggested it was too early to know for sure whether it was indeed responsible or whether it was simply claiming responsibility for random anti-Semitic attacks around Europe.

Security services have thwarted at least 20 Iranian-sponsored terror attacks in the UK in recent years, according to MI5.

The US and Israeli attacks on Iran have also added to fears that sleeper cells or proxies of the regime’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps will be called into action.

Last week, two Iranian immigrants were charged with spying following a counter-terror investigation into “alleged surveillance of locations and individuals linked to the Jewish community in the London area”.

Two days later, Police Scotland said a 34-year-old Iranian man and a 31-year-old Romanian woman had been charged after reports of two people trying to enter Faslane naval base, where Britain’s nuclear submarines are housed.