Syrian man who stabbed six people in Austria, killing one, pledged support for ISIS.

 

Mourners at the site of the attack. Fox News/AP.

A Syria man who stabbed six people in Austria, killing a 14 year old boy, has pledged support for ISIS. Fox News. The attacker was radicalized online over a very short period. He carried out his attack in a town Villach, a village of 60,000 people located near the border with Italy and Slovenia. The attack comes after a deadly car ramming attack in Germany that ended with two people dying in the hospital. US Vice President JD Vance had visited Europe between the two attacks and was very critical of the immigration policies that allows asylum seekers from the Middle East into Europe. The attacker in this case is not believed to have any wider connection to ISIS and is believed to be a "lone wolf" attacker. 

Thursday -Afghan asylum seeker commits terror attack in Munich, kills 2-y-o girl & her mom

Friday -JD Vance comes to Munich & warns about open border migration policies. EU political elite gets angry

Today -Syrian asylum seeker commits terror attack in Austria, kills 14-y-o boy pic.twitter.com/XNBW8CILy6

— Visegrád 24 (@visegrad24) February 15, 2025

My Comment:

This attack happened yesterday but I wasn't blogging this Saturday. Given the fact that the man was confirmed to have pledged allegiance to ISIS I thought it was worth covering. Not to mention the obvious political consequences of this attack. 

Regardless, that photo embedded in the tweet that I posted, well, it's something else. The man had just killed a teenage boy and stabbed five other people and he was sitting there with a grin on his face and his finger in the air. How that police officer stopped from firing on him is beyond me. Either way, it's the kind of image that sticks with you and it just shows how much hate these folks have. 

I do think that this attack was entirely preventable. As I have said for many years, there was no reason why Europe had to take these folks in the first place. By international law, Syrians could have absolutely stayed in the first safe country they arrived at, Turkey. That they did not was inexcusable. 

It's also inexcusable that these folks are still there. They had fled from the Syrian government, but the Syrian government is no longer there. Indeed, they are now ruled by the same kind of Islamic extremism these folks seem to like. Why aren't they being sent back? The war is over and they can just go home. 

Regardless of the preventability of this attack, I do wonder if this is another example of Islamic terrorism making a big comeback. Though ISIS as an organization isn't in the same position it once was, it certainly is still an influence. The lone wolf attacker is going to be a thing for a long time, but what I am worried about is core ISIS, or another Islamic terror group launching a major attack. 

There's an argument for both cases. Part of me thinks that ISIS won't be able to carry out the large scale attacks anymore because they don't have the funding. When the major European attacks were launched they had a tax base and safe haven in Syria, Iraq and Libya. They do not have that today and only control small areas of the Syrian desert. They just don't have the money. 

On the other hand, it costs almost nothing to ram your car into a crowd or stab a bunch of people with a knife. The large scale gun and explosive attacks of the last decade might not be possible anymore but these kinds of lower scale, lower impact attacks, are certainly both easy to fund and carry out. And all ISIS really has to do is keep up the propaganda and there will be lone wolf attackers that will be inspired by it...