Two more knife attacks fail in Belgium and UK.

A London police officer patrols near Buckingham Palace. Reuters. 

Two more knife attacks have failed in Europe. 

The first attack was centered on Buckingham Palace in London. Reuters. The attacker used a large knife to slightly injure two police officers before being captured. The attacker was a man in his mid 20's and police didn't speculate on a motive. The suspect was also injured in the attack and was taken to the hospital.  

The second attack occurred in Brussels, Belgium. Reuters. The attacker was a 30 year old man of Somali origin. He tried to stab two soldiers, slightly injuring them, before being shot and killed. Belgium believes this to be a terrorist attack, which was backed up by the fact that the suspect yelled "Allah Akbar". Belgium officials also believe that this was an isolated attack. 

My Comment:

This seems to happen after every major terrorist attack. Some stupid radical sees a successful terrorist attack, like the one in Barcelona, and thinks they can do something similar. Sometimes they succeed in their lone wolf attacks and sometimes they fail. This time they failed and failed hard. 

Whenever one of these attacks happens where the suspect is taken down almost immediately, I have to point out how terrible of a plan it is to attack cops and soldiers. Cops and soldiers are usually alert, work in teams and, with the obvious exception of the UK, almost always armed. They are about as hard of target as you can get. You don't go after them unless you have some firepower of their own, unless you want to die accomplishing anything. 

Generally speaking any plot targeting cops and soldiers with just a knife are doomed to fail. But there seems to be no shortage of fools to take up the tactic. It makes very little sense because attacking civilians will usually end with a higher body count or at least more people injured. Just recently in Finland, an attacker armed with just a knife was able to kill two people and stab 8 more before getting shot by the cops, and that's just the most current example. It makes way more sense to attack a bunch of civilians who, in Europe, have no way to defend themselves. I am glad though that so many of these terrorists are too stupid to use tactics that could actually work. 

It seems unclear what the motivation was for the Buckingham palace attack. It's possible that it wasn't an Islamic terrorist attack. After all, there was a mass stabbing in Russia that wasn't an Islamic terror attack recently, and there are other cases as well. There is always a chance that this was just some lone nut not affiliated with anything other than his own delusional ideas. 

I think that is very unlikely though. I think the choice of target was chosen for maximum impact. Stabbing cops makes me think it's probably an ISIS inspired attacker since they have called for Muslims to do so for quite some time now. Having it occur outside of Buckingham Palace also screams ISIS inspired terror attack. Without a description of the attacker or any release of a motive, we don't know for sure, but my money would be on an ISIS inspired lone wolf attacker.

We can be much more sure about the Brussels attack. The attacker was of Somali origin and screamed Allah Akbar. There is basically no chance of that being anything other than an Islamic terror attack. I do agree that this is likely a lone wolf attack though. A more organized effort would have involved better weapons and a better target. 

It seems that Europe's response to these attacks is getting better. These cops and soldiers were on the ball and were able to quickly subdue the attackers. The Belgium soldiers shot their attacker dead while the British police were able to somehow subdue their attacker. Had they failed it is possible that each attack could have been much worse. Thankfully they did not.