LONDON (AP) – British police arrested two men on Wednesday in connection with an arson attack on four ambulances belonging to a Jewish charity, an assault that authorities are investigating as an antisemitic hate crime.
The Metropolitan Police said the two men, aged 45 and 47, were arrested in London on suspicion of arson with intent to endanger life and that both men have been taken to a police station in the city for questioning.
Officers are searching two properties in north London, a few kilometers (miles) from the scene of the attack in Golders Green.
Commander Helen Flanagan, head of Counter Terrorism Policing London, said the arrests marked “an important breakthrough in the investigation.” But she noted that surveillance camera footage of the incident suggests three people were involved.
Police have not declared the incident to be a terror attack, but are investigating a claim of responsibility by a group with potential links to Iran.
The blaze early on Monday morning in Golders Green, a London neighborhood with a large Jewish population, consumed four ambulances belonging to the volunteer organization Hatzola Northwest. Oxygen cylinders in the vehicles exploded, breaking windows in an adjacent apartment block.
Also shattered was the community´s shaky sense of security, already strained by years of wars in the Middle East and what many say is soaring hatred of Jews.
The Metropolitan Police force has stepped up security for Jewish schools, synagogues and community centers ahead of Passover next month, including what the force says are “highly visible firearms patrols.”
The United Kingdom 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 up to last October.
Police are 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 described it as a recently founded group with suspected links to pro-Iran networks that has also claimed responsibility for synagogue attacks in Belgium and the Netherlands.
Metropolitan Police chief Mark Rowley said detectives are investigating the claim but that it was too early to attribute the attack to the Iranian state.
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