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Jihadist terrorism in Europe and the West

Europol’s 2025 report counted 58 terrorist attacks across 14 EU member states during 2024, of which 34 were completed. Twenty-four were jihadist, up from fourteen the year before, and jihadist attacks were the most lethal category. Twenty of the twenty-four were carried out by lone actors, and 449 people were arrested on terrorism offences across 20 member states.

Those are the annual numbers. Behind them sits a two-decade record of mass-casualty attacks on European cities, none of which happened in a country under Israeli occupation.

The major attacks, by country

Section titled “The major attacks, by country”
DatePlaceDeadAttribution
1 Sep 2004Beslan, Russia334, including 186 childrenChechen jihadist group under Shamil Basayev
11 Mar 2004Madrid, Spain193al-Qaeda-inspired cell, commuter trains
22 Mar 2024Crocus City Hall, Russia145Islamic State Khorasan
13 Nov 2015Paris, France130Islamic State, Bataclan, Stade de France, cafés
14 Jul 2016Nice, France86Islamic State inspired, truck on the Promenade des Anglais
7 Jul 2005London, United Kingdom52al-Qaeda-linked cell, three trains and a bus
22 Mar 2016Brussels, Belgium32Islamic State, airport and metro
22 May 2017Manchester, United Kingdom22Islamic State linked, Ariana Grande concert
17 Aug 2017Barcelona and Cambrils, Spain16Islamic State cell, van on Las Ramblas
19 Dec 2016Berlin, Germany13Islamic State inspired, Christmas market
7 Jan 2015Paris, France12al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, Charlie Hebdo
3 Jun 2017London Bridge, United Kingdom8Islamic State inspired
11 Mar 2012Toulouse and Montauban, France7Mohammed Merah, three soldiers and four at a Jewish school
22 Mar 2017Westminster, United Kingdom6Islamic State inspired
7 Apr 2017Stockholm, Sweden5Islamic State sympathiser, truck on Drottninggatan
2 Nov 2020Vienna, Austria4Islamic State sympathiser
18 Mar 2019Utrecht, Netherlands4tram shooting
9 Jan 2015Paris, France4Amedy Coulibaly, Hypercacher kosher supermarket
24 May 2014Brussels, Belgium4Mehdi Nemmouche, Jewish Museum
23 Aug 2024Solingen, Germany3Islamic State claimed, town festival
29 Oct 2020Nice, France3Notre-Dame basilica
26 Jul 2016Saint-Étienne-du-Rouvray, France1Father Jacques Hamel, priest, throat cut at morning mass
16 Oct 2020Conflans-Sainte-Honorine, France1Samuel Paty, teacher, beheaded for showing cartoons in a civics lesson
22 May 2013Woolwich, London1Fusilier Lee Rigby, run down and hacked in the street

What the target list says

Section titled “What the target list says”

Read the right-hand column as a statement of intent. A commuter train. A concert full of teenagers. A Christmas market. A cartoonist. A schoolteacher who taught a civics lesson about free expression. A priest at morning mass. A kosher supermarket on a Friday afternoon.

None of these is a military objective, a settlement, a checkpoint or an instrument of Israeli policy. They are the ordinary institutions of European life, chosen because they are the ordinary institutions of European life. The claim that this is retaliation for something Israel did requires believing that Samuel Paty was killed over the West Bank.

The shape has changed, the direction has not

Section titled “The shape has changed, the direction has not”

Europol’s series shows the organisational form shifting rather than the threat receding. The directed cells of 2004 to 2016, trained in Syria or Pakistan and dispatched in teams, largely gave way to lone actors inspired online, which is why 20 of the 24 jihadist attacks recorded in the EU in 2024 involved a single person, and why recent completed attacks kill in single figures where the older ones killed in dozens.

Two other things in the same reporting are worth carrying. Arrests went up, not down, to 449 across 20 member states, with Spain, France, Italy and Germany accounting for the largest shares, which is what a live threat under continuous police pressure looks like rather than a fading one. And the count of jihadist attacks in the EU nearly doubled between 2023 and 2024.

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Sources

Section titled “Sources”