AP
London
British police hunted three suspects on Tuesday over an arson attack on a Jewish charity’s ambulances and pledged to step up security around a community that feels increasingly at risk.
The blaze in Golders Green, a London neighbourhood with a large Jewish population, consumed four ambulances belonging to the volunteer organisation Hatzola Northwest.
Oxygen cylinders on the vehicles exploded, breaking windows in an adjacent apartment block. Also shattered was the community’s shaky sense of security, already strained by wars in the Middle East and what many say is soaring hatred of Jews.
“We’re feeling vulnerable,” said Damon Hoff, president of the Machzike Hadath Synagogue, where the ambulances were parked. Some of the building’s stained-glass windows were damaged in the blast.
“We know what’s going on,” Hoff said. “Nobody’s eyes are closed. We’re living through wars. There’s multiple fronts, and Britain is a part of it, and our community is a tiny little part of a very, very big world.”
Britain’s Jewish community is long-established but tiny as a percentage of the population, numbering about 300,000. The northwest London suburb of Golders Green is one of its epicentres, home to kosher restaurants, multiple Jewish schools and several
dozen synagogues.
The number of antisemitic incidents reported across the UK has soared since the October 7, 2023, attack by Hamas on Israel and the subsequent Gaza war, according to the Community Security Trust, which works to protect the Jewish community. The group recorded 3,700 incidents in 2025, up from 1,662 in 2022.
Counterterror police are leading the investigation into the ambulance arson attack, and probing a claim of responsibility posted on social media by a group calling itself Harakat Ashab al-Yamin al-Islamia, which translates as the Islamic Movement of the Companions of the Right.
Israel’s government has called it a recently founded group with suspected links to pro-Iran networks that has also claimed responsibility for synagogue attacks in Belgium and the Netherlands.
Mark Rowley, chief of London’s Metropolitan Police, said detectives are investigating the claim but it is too early to attribute the attack to the Iranian state.
The UK has accused Iran of using criminal proxies to conduct attacks on European soil targeting opposition media outlets and the Jewish community. Britain’s MI5 domestic intelligence service says more than 20 “potentially lethal” Iran-backed plots were disrupted in the year to October.
