Four ambulances belonging to Hatzola Northwest, a volunteer Jewish organization providing emergency medical response, were set on fire early Monday in London’s Golders Green neighborhood, and police said investigators are treating the attack as an antisemitic hate crime. The Metropolitan Police said there were no injuries during the overnight incident, though the fire shattered windows in nearby homes and left the vehicles charred.
The Metropolitan Police said officers were called to the scene after receiving reports of a fire, and the London Fire Brigade reported that the four ambulances were damaged. Firefighters said oxygen cylinders on the vehicles exploded, breaking windows in an adjacent apartment block, and nearby homes were evacuated as a precaution.
Investigators said counterterror officers have been put in charge of the investigation even though the incident had not been classified as a terrorist matter. “We are pursuing all lines of inquiry, including an online claim of responsibility by an Islamist group who have claimed other attacks across Europe and have potential Iranian state links,” Metropolitan Police chief Mark Rowley said, describing the ongoing effort to verify the authenticity of the claim.
Police said an image and video circulating online, posted on Telegram and allegedly linked to an Islamist group called Harakat Ashab al-Yamin al-Islamia, showed a map of the location where the ambulances were kept and footage of the fire. The Metropolitan Police said they were looking for three suspects and that no arrests had been made.
A claim of responsibility by Harakat Ashab al-Yamin al-Islamia has been linked in the past to attacks on synagogues in Belgium and the Netherlands, according to the report. Israel’s government, police said, has called the group recently founded and suspected to have links to pro-Iran networks, while Rowley said it was “too early” to attribute Monday’s attack to the Iranian state.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer condemned what he called a “horrific” attack, and he met Jewish community leaders at 10 Downing St. on Monday to discuss the response. Starmer said, “Antisemitism has no place in our society and it’s really important that we all stand together at a moment like this,” according to the report.
Religious leaders also reacted. The Archbishop of Canterbury Sarah Mullally said such acts of violence, hatred and intimidation have no place in society, and Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis called it a “sickening assault.” Mirvis said in a post on X that Jewish communities worldwide were facing a growing pattern of violent attacks and that they would meet the moment “with shared resolve” against hatred and intimidation.
Police said they would increase security for Jewish schools, synagogues and community centers ahead of Passover next month, as the attack spread fear through Britain’s roughly 300,000-strong Jewish community. Community Security Trust data referenced in the report said antisemitic incidents in the UK have soared since Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel and Israel’s ensuing war against Hamas in Gaza, with the group recording 3,700 incidents in 2025 compared with 1,662 in 2022.
The report also cited recent attacks and prosecutions involving UK Jewish targets. In October 2025, an attacker drove into people outside a Manchester synagogue celebrating Yom Kippur and stabbed one person to death, and another person died after being inadvertently shot by police, the report said. Last week, two men in London were charged with carrying out “hostile” surveillance of the UK’s Jewish community on behalf of Iran, it added.
In Golders Green, the report said Peter Zinkin, a Conservative politician who represents the neighborhood on the local council, criticized the government’s handling of tensions tied to the Israel-Gaza war and said the community felt “distress and anger.” “Burning ambulances in the middle of the night is a disgrace,” Zinkin said, adding that he feared the attack happened because the government and media, “particularly certain parts of the media,” had validated antisemitism nationwide.