4 ambulances belonging to a Jewish charity were set on fire early Monday in London in what British police are investigating as an antisemitic hate crime. Detectives are working to find out whether a claim of responsibility from a bunch with alleged links to Iran is authentic.
Though it has not been classified as a terrorist incident, counterterror officers have been put in control of the investigation. Nobody was injured within the nighttime attack, which shattered windows in nearby homes and left the vehicles charred shells.
“We’re pursuing all lines of inquiry, including an internet claim of responsibility by an Islamist group who’ve claimed other attacks across Europe and have potential Iranian state links,” said Mark Rowley, chief of London’s Metropolitan Police.
Religious and political leaders condemned what Prime Minister Keir Starmer called a “horrific” attack.
“Antisemitism has no place in our society and it’s really essential that all of us stand together at a moment like this,” said Starmer, who met Jewish community leaders at 10 Downing St. on Monday to debate the response to the attack.
Officers were called to Golders Green, a north London neighbourhood with a big Jewish population, after receiving reports of a hearth, the Metropolitan Police force said.
4 ambulances belonging to Hatzola Northwest, a volunteer organization that gives emergency medical response, were damaged, based on the London Fire Brigade.
Oxygen cylinders on the vehicles exploded, breaking windows in an adjoining apartment block. Nearby homes were evacuated as a precaution.
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What seemed to be footage from a security camera showed three figures in black wearing hoods carrying a canister toward one in every of the ambulances before flames erupted across the vehicle. Police said they’re in search of three suspects, but no arrests have been made yet.
Police attempt to authenticate claim of responsibility
A video posted on Telegram, allegedly by an Islamist group called Harakat Ashab al-Yamin al-Islamia, showed a map of the placement where the ambulances were kept and photographs of them on fire. A bunch of the identical name, which translates because the Islamic Movement of the Companions of the Right, previously claimed responsibility for synagogue attacks in Belgium and the Netherlands.
Burnt cars seen in Golders Green, London, England, Monday, March 23, 2026 after an apparent arson attack on 4 vehicles belonging to a Jewish ambulance service, Hatzola Northwest, in London.
Jonathan Brady/PA Wire/PA via AP
Israel’s government has called it a recently founded group with suspected links to pro-Iran networks.
“The rapid growth lately of Iranian state threats is grave,” Rowley told the annual dinner of the Community Security Trust, which works to supply safety for the Jewish community organization. But he said “it is simply too early for me to attribute last night’s attack in Golders Green to the Iranian state.”
The attack spread fear and alarm through Britain’s roughly 300,000-strong Jewish community, which feels increasingly vulnerable.
Mark Reisner, who lives within the neighbourhood, heard loud explosions and arrived on the scene “just because the third ambulance was blowing up,” he told Sky News.
“A really loud explosion, you kind of felt it undergo your guts,” he said, adding, “it’s just left us all reeling with confusion and shock.”
Previous attacks on U.K. Jewish community
The variety of antisemitic incidents reported across the U.K. has soared since Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel and Israel’s ensuing war against Hamas in Gaza, based on the Community Security Trust, which works to guard the Jewish community. The group recorded 3,700 incidents in 2025, up from 1,662 in 2022.
In October 2025, an attacker drove his automobile into people gathered outside a Manchester synagogue to have fun the Jewish holiday of Yom Kippur and stabbed one person to death. One other person died in the course of the attack after being inadvertently shot by police.
Last week, two men in London were charged with carrying out “hostile” surveillance last 12 months of the U.K.’s Jewish community on behalf of Iran.
Rowley, the Metropolitan Police commissioner, said the force would increase security for Jewish schools, synagogues and community centers ahead of Passover next month.
Some members of the community criticize Starmer’s Labour Party government for failing to stop pro-Palestinian demonstrations from tipping into anti-Jewish speech and acts.
Peter Zinkin, a Conservative politician who represents Golders Green on the local council, said the community felt “distress and anger.”
“Burning ambulances in the course of the night is a disgrace,” he said. “And you may have to ask yourself, why did it occur? And the explanation I’m afraid that it happened is that the federal government and the media, particularly certain parts of the media, have validated antisemitism on a national scale.”
Archbishop of Canterbury Sarah Mullally, the top of the Anglican Church, said “such acts of violence, hatred and intimidation haven’t any place in our society.”
Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis called it a “sickening assault.”
“At a time when Jewish communities world wide are facing a growing pattern of those violent attacks, we are going to meet this moment with shared resolve and stand together against hatred and intimidation,” he wrote on X.
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