By Otso Iho, Senior Analyst, IHS Jane’s Terrorism and Insurgency Centre (JTIC)
Key Points:
- On 19 December, an as yet unidentified individual drove a vehicle seemingly deliberately into a crowd at the Breitscheidplatz Christmas market in Berlin, killing at least 12 people and wounding 48 others.
- Although the motivation of the attack is unclear and no group immediately claimed responsibility, police said early on 20 December that they were treating it as a “suspected terror attack”.
Analysis:
The Islamic State and other Islamist militant groups, including Al-Qaeda, have frequently called for the use of vehicles to attack crowded places as a simple, low-capability method of causing mass casualties. The efficacy of this tactic was most pointedly demonstrated on 14 July, when Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel drove a truck into a crowd celebrating Bastille Day in Nice, France, killing 84 people and wounding hundreds of others. Although the Nice attack for the first time highlighted the very high potential death toll that can be caused via such an attack, the use of vehicles is not a new tactic. In addition to Nice, similar vehicle-impact attacks — although always causing fewer casualties — were conducted in France in December 2014 and January 2016; Canada in October 2014; and in the UK in May 2013. The tactic has also been frequently employed against security force targets in Israel and the West Bank.
The selection of a Christmas market as a target was notable given the high terrorism threat that Germany and Europe more widely currently faces, and the recent identification of locations such as the Breitscheidplatz market as high-profile targets by militant groups, such as the Islamic State, and security officials.
On 22 November, the US Department of State released a statement warning its citizens over a heightened risk of terror attacks during the Christmas holiday season in Europe, saying it had credible information of planned attacks by the Islamic State at “holiday festivals, events and outdoor markets”. Despite heightened levels of security at high-profile targets across Europe, the risk of further attacks remains elevated by lone actors, inspired by Islamic State propaganda and by individuals or cells with more direct contact and operational support from the group. Security forces will also struggle to secure areas against low-capability attacks, which bear a lower risk of detection for the perpetrators and are more difficult to prevent.
About IHS JTIC
The IHS Jane’s Terrorism and Insurgency Centre uses open source data to build its global database of terrorist and insurgent events. The database enables users to search by location, target, group (active and dormant), tactics and casualty numbers in order to quickly obtain actionable intelligence and/or data. The database includes over 200,000 events since 2009 and over 250 group profiles. Information from social media that could not be verified through conventional and trusted news sources is not included in the data.
