A man has been charged with attempted murder after two Jewish men were stabbed to death in London in what police said was a terrorist attack.
Two men, aged 76 and 34, were stabbed in Golders Green, north London, on Wednesday.
On Friday morning, police announced that Essa Suleiman had been charged with two counts of attempted murder in a public place and one count of possessing a knife in connection with the attack.
The 45-year-old, from Camberwell, south London, was also charged with attempted murder in connection with a separate incident the same day, just a few miles away, just south of Tower Bridge.
He was remanded in custody and is due to appear at Westminster Magistrates’ Court on Friday.
Both victims in the Golders Green incident were treated in hospital after being stabbed. The 34-year-old man has since been released, while the 76-year-old man remains there in stable condition, police said.
Police have classified the attack as a terrorist incident and said a counter-terrorism investigation is ongoing.
The stabbing follows a series of attacks on synagogues and other public buildings, which have left London’s Jewish community feeling anxious.
On Thursday, the Joint Terrorism Analysis Center raised Britain’s terror threat level from ‘severe’ to ‘severe’, meaning a terrorist attack is ‘very high’. Before raising the level, the attack was considered a “might happen”.
Metropolitan Police Commissioner Mark Rowley said he had submitted proposals to the government to increase police resources for London’s Jewish community.
Mr Rowley warned in an interview with Times Radio that Britain was facing a “pandemic of anti-Semitism”.
“There needs to be an upstream effort to address these attitudes in society that are all too prevalent,” the police chief said.
In March, arsonists set fire to four ambulances owned by a Jewish charity in Golders Green. Four people were later charged by police.
A few weeks later, the site of a synagogue and Jewish charity in north London was attacked.
Earlier this week, several streets away from the scene of Wednesday’s stabbing, an arson attack targeted a memorial wall displaying photos of protesters killed by Iranian security forces in a brutal crackdown earlier this year, as well as those killed in a Hamas attack in southern Israel on October 7, 2023.
Speaking to reporters at the scene of the stabbing Wednesday, Lowery said racist and anti-Semitic hate crimes are on the rise. “We know that some individuals are encouraged, persuaded, or paid to commit acts of violence on behalf of foreign organizations or hostile nations,” the police chief said.
Mr Rowley said police had “significantly stepped up” their operations in the capital following the recent attacks.
Meanwhile, the Iranian embassy in the UK said in response to the Golders Green attack that it “categorically rejects” any allegations of involvement in “violent activities or incidents in the UK”.
“Such baseless accusations… lack reliable evidence and appear to serve narrow political purposes,” the embassy said in a post on Thursday.
Anti-Semitic attacks in the UK have increased since 2023, when Israel’s brutal war in Gaza began in response to attacks by Hamas.
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer on Wednesday described the “anti-Semitic attack” as “absolutely appalling”.
“We all need to be clear in our determination to deal with these illegal acts, which have been occurring frequently recently,” he told parliament.
Israeli President Isaac Herzog said he was “horrified by another violent attack against Jews on the streets of London in broad daylight.” He called on the UK government to “take urgent and immediate action before the next anti-Semitic attack occurs”.
