Deadliest vehicle-ramming attacks by ‘terrorists’ since 2006

CAIRO - 10 August 2017: It seems that terrorism has found in running over people using vehicles a steady method to inject its venom into the hearts of people and shed blood everywhere in the world.

Running over people has proven to be a rather easy and cheap method to execute terrorist attacks, furthermore, it guarantees the “surprise element”, as such acts are hard to be monitored or expected.

“Vehicle-ramming”, a scenario that has been repeatedly played out, particularly in Europe…

In March 2006, a man called Mohammed Taheri-azar, an Iranian-American, drove an SUV into an area crowded with students at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in the US, to "avenge the deaths of Muslims worldwide". Nine people were injured during the attack and Taheri-azar was later convicted of attempted murder in 2008 and is sentenced to 33 years in prison.

In July 2016, the most significant vehicle-ramming attack took place in the city of Nice, south of France, when a terrorist of Tunisian nationality, Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel, drove a truck into a crowd who were leaving following celebrations of Bastille Day. Islamic State announced its responsibility for the attack which left 86 people dead and 434 other injured.

In December 2016, an asylum seeker called Anas Amri drove a truck into a Christmas market in Berlin, leaving 12 people dead and 56 others injured. The Tunisian national attacker was shot and killed by police in Milan, Italy, four days after the attack.

In February 2017, one person was killed and two others were injured in Heidelberg in Germany after a man drove a car into a group of pedestrians.

In March 2017, an attacker called Khaled Masood drove an SUV into a crowd on the sidewalk of the Westminster Bridge in London, killing four and leaving more than 50 people injured. He was later shot by an armed police officer and died at the scene.

In April 2017, peaceful Stockholm, the capital of Sweden, fell as yet another victim of the vehicle-ramming attacks, when a rejected asylum seeker from Uzbekistan hijacked a truck and drove into a crowd along a busy street before crashing into a department store. Five people were killed and 14 others were injured.

In June 2017, London witnessed another terrorist attack on June 3, when a van drove into pedestrians on London Bridge. Suspects then proceeded on foot to a nearby Borough Market where they stabbed people. The terror attack left seven people dead and 50 others injured. Later that month, on June 19, also in London, an attack targeting Muslims took place, where a man drove a van into pedestrians who were leaving after attending late-night prayers at London's Finsbury Park Mosque, the attack killed one man and injured 11 others.

On August 9, 2017, the latest vehicle-ramming attack took place in the western Paris suburb of Levallois-Perret, where French soldiers were hit and injured by a vehicle. Six soldiers were hurt, four of them lightly and two more seriously, Reuters reported. The suspect was shot and arrested on a motorway in northern France later that day.