"Mumbai-Style Attack Is Coming To London"

In an official statement, Scotland Yard warned businesses in London to expect a Mumbai-style attack on the city.

In a briefing in the City of London 12 days ago, a senior detective from SO15, the Metropolitan police counter-terrorism command, said: “Mumbai is coming to London.”

The detective said companies should anticipate a shooting and hostage-taking raid “involving a small number of gunmen with handguns and improvised explosive devices”.

The warning — the bluntest issued by police — has underlined an assessment that a terrorist cell may be preparing an attack on London early next year. {...}

Officials now report an increase in “intelligence chatter” — communications captured by electronic eavesdropping agencies. One senior security adviser said the police warnings had intensified and become much more specific in the past fortnight.

“Before, there has been speculation. Now we are getting what appears to be a definite plot to carry out a firearms attack on London,” he said.

Back when the Mumbai attacks occurred just over a year ago, a number of observers ( including myself) speculated that it was the forerunner of a new type of jihad attack targeting urban environments in relatively open cities.

From a jihadi viewpoint, London is an ideal environment for this kind of attack. The civilian population is largely disarmed and defenseless, the available police are already stretched thin because of the large urban environment and would be outgunned by automatic weapons and the SAS who normally deal with terrorism in London would be hard pressed to deal with multiple attacks planned and carried out by a trained team. The city is a target rich environment with large hotels,stores and Jewish schools, synagogues and community centers to target, and those targets could easily be pre-programmed into GPS units as they were in Mumbai.

And finally, just as in Mumbai, London has a large Muslim population, a number of whom can be expected to be jihad sympathizers prepared to gather intel,provide safe houses for the jihadis and perhaps even participate in the attacks themselves.

If it happens, the point of origination will likely prove to be a jihad friendly country like Pakistan, perhaps utilizing British Muslims radicalized and recruited at home who went back to Pakistan to be trained and equipped.

Considering Britain's attitude toward a country on the front lines of jihad like Israel, the British government's consistent support of organizations like Hamas and their general willingness to bend over backwards for Islamists, the fact that their own security services now predict a murderous attack they admittedly would have trouble stopping is ironic.

As author Melanie Phillips pointed out in her superb book "Londonistan", the British authorities had a tacit agreement with the Islamists that they would look the other way at minor incidents and proselytizing for jihad at places like the Finsbury Park Mosque in exchange for relative immunity from large scale terrorist attacks.

In retrospect, Britain's appeasement of jihad and Islamism appears not to have worked out so well.

While I would advise this of peace loving British subjects in general, I would particularly advise Jewish institutions in London and other large British cities to step up their security considerably, even if it means obtaining arms clandestinely and learning how to use them. A few private security guards poorly armed at best are simply not adequate insurance anymore, and some jobs it's simply better not to hire out.