Deadly Attacks in Western Europe Since 2014

Below are some of the deadly attacks that have occurred in Western Europe in the past three years.

• 7 April 2017 (Sweden) – A truck drives into a crowd on a shopping street and crashes into a department store in central Stockholm. Four people are killed and a further 15 are wounded, with police calling the incident a terror attack.
• 22 March 2017 (United Kingdom) – An attacker stabs a policeman close to parliament in London after a car ploughs into pedestrians on nearby Westminster Bridge. Six people are killed, including the assailant and the policeman he stabbed, and at least twenty people are injured.
• 18 March 2017 (France) – A man attempts to snatch a gun from a female soldier on patrol at Orly airport south of Paris. According to an interior ministry spokesman, the man had earlier fired a shot at police during an identity check before fleeing the scene. He was shot dead in the Orly incident by other members of the soldier patrol unit.
• 3 February 2017 (France) – A machete-wielding man, shouting “Allahu Akbar” (God is greatest), attacks soldiers in a shopping mall on the edge of the Louvre museum in Paris. He is shot and seriously wounded. Security sources in Cairo, Egypt later identify the man as Abdullah Reda al-Hamamy, who was born in Dakahliya, a province located northeast of Cairo.
• 19 December 2016 (Germany) – A truck ploughs into a crowded Christmas market in central Berlin, killing 12 people and injuring 48. German Chancellor Angela Merkel says that authorities are assuming it was a terrorist attack.
• 26 July 2016 (France) – Two attackers kill a priest with a blade and seriously wound another hostage in a church in northern France before being shot dead by police. French President Francois Hollande later discloses that the two hostage-takers had pledged allegiance to the so-called Islamic State (IS) group.
• 24 July 2016 (Germany) – A 21-year-od Syrian refugee is arrested after killing a pregnant woman and wounding two people with a machete in the southwestern city of Reutlingen, near Stuttgart. Police later state that “given the current evidence, there is no indication that this was a terrorist attack.”
• 24 July 2016 (Germany) – A Syrian man wounds fifteen people when he blows himself up outside a music festival in Ansbach in southern Germany. IS claims responsibility for the attack. The 27-year-old had arrived in Germany two years ago and had claimed asylum. He had been in trouble with the police repeatedly for drug-taking and other offences and had faced deportation to Bulgaria.
• 22 July 2016 (Germany) – An 18-year-old German-Iranian gunman apparently acting alone kills at least nine people in Munich. The teenager had no Islamist ties however he was obsessed with mass killings. The attack was carried out on the fifth anniversary of twin attacks by Norwegian mass murderer Anders Breivik, who killed 77 people.
• 18 July 2016 (Germany) – A 17-year-old Afghan refuge wielding an axe and a knife attacks passengers on a train in southern Germany, severely wounding four, before being shot dead by police. IS claims responsibility for the attack.
• 14 July 2016 (France) – A gunman drives a heavy truck into a crowd celebrating Bastille Day in the French city of Nice, killing 86 people and injuring scores more in an attack claimed by IS. The attacker is identified as a Tunisian-born Frenchman.
• 14 July 2016 (France) – A Frenchman of Moroccan origin stabs a police commander to death outside his home in a Paris suburb and kills his partner, who also worked for the police. The attacker told police negotiators during a siege that he was answering an appeal by IS.
• 22 March 2016 (Belgium) – Three IS suicide bombers, all Belgian nationals, blow themselves up at Brussels airport and in a metro train in the Belgian capital. Thirty-two people are killed. Police find links with the November 2015 attacks in Paris, France.
• 13 November 2015 (France) – Paris is rocked by multiple, near simultaneous gun-and-bomb attacks on entertainment sties around the city, killing 130 people and wounding a further 368. IS claims responsibility. Two of the ten known perpetrators were Belgian citizens while three others were French.
• 7 – 9 January 2015 (France) – Two Islamist militants break into an editorial meeting of satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo on 7 January and rake it with bullets, killing seventeen people.. Another militant kills a policewoman the following day and takes hostages at a supermarket on 9 January, killing four people before police shoot him dead.
• 24 May 2014 (Belgium) – Four people are killed in a shooting at the Jewish Museum in central Brussels. The attacker was French national Mehdi Nemmouche, 29, who was subsequently arrested in Marseille, France. He has since been extradited and is awaiting trial in Belgium.