Yet another car ramming attack in the UK.

A forensic team examines the car used in the attack. Reuters. 

In yet another terror incident in the UK a 29 year old man has been arrested after ramming his car into a group of pedestrians near the UK parliament in London. Reuters. Three people were wounded in the attack but nobody was killed. It was the 2nd attack targeting Parliament in less than two years. The suspect was a British citizen but was from overseas and was known to police but not to intelligence services. No other suspects are likely to be involved and no links to a wider terror cell. 

The Sun, a British tabloid, has identified the suspect as Salih Khater, a Sudanese immigrant.

My Comment:

I'm a little late on this story but I wanted to cover the New Mexico compound case as that appears to be an ongoing situation while this one was obviously resolved early this morning. Plus this attack was a failure and thankfully nobody died. I did want to mention it briefly though. 

It seems pretty clear that this attack was a total failure. The suspect did not kill anyone and only managed to injure three people. He crashed his car into a anti-crash barricade and was arrested immediately. All and all this went about as good as one of these attacks can go. 

Once again I am thankful for stupid terrorists. It's very clear that the attackers plan was not going to work under the best of circumstances. First of all his choice of vehicle was a bad one. It was a Ford Fiesta, which I believe is a compact car without a lot of weight behind it. He was going fast enough to injure people but if he had chosen a heavier vehicle he might have actually managed to kill someone. Remember, the Nice attack that killed so many involved a full size cargo truck. Using a tiny compact car is not the way to pull off one of these attacks. I know that Europe's car culture is vastly different than the United States but even a small pickup truck or medium sized sedan could have done more damage. 

And his choice of target was foolish as well. Attacking Parliament is one of the dumbest ideas you can have because there probably isn't anywhere else in London or even the UK that's more well guarded. This attack was stopped in seconds because he attacked a place with such high security. Sure there is the emotional and symbolic impact of attacking the seat of British government but that's more than balanced by the fact that he failed utterly to kill anyone. Indeed, I kind of view this guy as a laughing stock. 

I don't think there will be any links to a wider terror networks. This attack screams lone wolf to me. He was likely inspired by terror groups like ISIS or al-Qaeda, but I doubt he got any funding or instruction from them. For one their ability to do so has been greatly disrupted as their strongholds in Iraq and Syria have been reduced to mere shadows of their former selves. And if they had done so I think they would have come up with a better plan...