Golders Green stabbing of 2 Jewish men declared as terrorist attack
A stabbing that saw two Jewish men, one aged 76, injured has been declared a terrorist attack, police have said
Last updated 29th Apr 2026
A stabbing that saw two Jewish men, one aged 76, injured has been declared a terrorist attack, police said.
A man has been arrested after he was seen running along Golders Green Road armed with a knife and “attempting to stab Jewish members of the public”, Jewish security group Shomrim said on social media.
Speaking outside Scotland Yard on Wednesday, Head of Counter Terrorism Policing Laurence Taylor confirmed that the stabbing has been formally declared to be terrorism.
He said: “This has now formally been declared a terrorist incident. Our highly specialised teams of officers are working with the Metropolitan Police to progress this investigation quickly and establish exactly what has happened."
“We’re also working with our partners in the security services to ensure we have a full intelligence picture, and one of the lines of inquiry is whether this attack was deliberately targeting the Jewish community in London.”
Meanwhile, the Chief Rabbi and the Israeli foreign ministry have called for action after a series of incidents targeting Jewish sites in the UK.
Sir Ephraim Mirvis said “words of condemnation are no longer sufficient”.
The Israeli foreign ministry said the recent spate of attacks on Jewish areas means “the UK Government can no longer claim this is under control”.
Two victims, one in his 70s and the other in his 30s, are in a stable condition in hospital after the attack shortly after 11am in Highfield Avenue.
London Ambulance Service confirmed the attacker was also taken to hospital, with one Shomrim volunteer saying they saw him being given CPR.
Unverified footage postage on social media shows an older man putting on a kippah as he waits at a bus stop, before the attacker lunges at him.
A pizza shop worker on Golders Green Road said he helped the elderly stab victim after he saw him bleeding from his neck.
Tariq Aziz, who works at pizza takeaway shop Slice, told the Press Association: “He came to our shop and then I gave him a tissue and helped him, and then police came suddenly and arrest the guy.”
He said the suspect “wasn’t running away” after the attack and that when the police came, he pointed out the suspect as he was “just walking down there with a knife”.
Ben Grossnass, a volunteer in Shomrim’s emergency response unit, told the Press Association: “We got a phone call to the hotline at 11.20am this morning, we were on the scene within a minute-and-a-half of the phone call.
“I saw a lot of shock in the street and the attacker was having CPR, I think he went into cardiac arrest after being tasered.
“There is a lot of hate in society and antisemitism. There are ways the Government can crack down on this and it is time they did that.”
Police said they are working to establish the “nationality and background” of the attacker, and the investigation is being led by Counter Terrorism Policing.
Head of Counter Terrorism Policing Laurence Taylor said: “Whilst I must stress this investigation is at an early stage, we are working quickly to understand exactly what happened.
“Thank-you to those who were in the area at the time and supported the response to this terrible incident.”
The scene is around half-a-mile from a memorial wall where an attempted arson attack took place on Monday, and near where four Jewish community ambulances were destroyed by fire in late March.