TERRORISMInto the Crowd: The Evolution of Vehicular Attacks and Prevention Efforts
In recent months, there have been a series of vehicular attacks in Germany, the United States, and Israel targeting civilians during celebrations and public gatherings. The relative ease of launching a vehicle attack and the very large number of soft targets available means it is a tactic that is very difficult to defend against.
Five recent mass-casualty attacks underline the continued threat posed by the vehicle-ramming terrorist tactic. On December 20, 2024, Taleb Jawad Al-Abdulmohsen, a 50-year-old Saudi psychiatrist and self-professed atheist and anti-Islamist,1 drove his rented BMW X3 around the Magdeburg Christmas Market in northeast Germany. Using an emergency escape road set up by local law enforcement,2 the perpetrator was able to drive into the crowd for 400 meters, killing six and injuring 299.3
Eleven days later, Shamsud-Din Jabbar, a U.S. veteran from Texas, drove a Ford F-150 Lightning pickup truck flying an Islamic State flag into pedestrians celebrating New Year’s Eve on Bourbon Street in New Orleans, Louisiana.4 Crashing his vehicle after 400 meters, he opened fire on the crowd before being neutralized by law enforcement officers. Fourteen people were killed and 35 were injured during the attack.5
A few weeks later, on February 13, 2025, Farhad Noori, a 24-year-old Afghan national, rammed his Mini Cooper into a union demonstration close the Munich train station. Two people—a mother and her two-year-old daughter—were killed and 37 others were injured before the suspect was arrested by German law enforcement. Noori was known to share Islamist content online; he screamed “Allah Akbar” multiples times as he was arrested.6
A further two weeks later, in a terrorist attack on February 27, 2025, a 53-year-old Palestinian driver injured 13 people at a bus stop in Israel before being neutralized by Israeli law enforcement.7
Most recently, on March 3, 2025, in Mannheim, Germany, a 40-year-old German national with mental health challenges drove his car into a crowd, before fleeing. The attack killed two people and injured 11 others. The driver then attempted suicide using an alarm pistol in his car, before being detained.8
This article explores the characteristics of vehicular attacks, with part one discussing the tactical advantages they offer to the assailants both during the preparation of attacks and in their execution. The second part of the article discusses the evolution of the threat, and the third part examines the evolution of prevention efforts.
Characteristics of Vehicular Attacks
Vehicle-ramming tactics, and efforts to stop them, are far from a new phenomenon and were first observed in Israel in the early 1970s and have more recently been a regular feature of Islamic State terrorism in the West.9 Vehicular attacks are, by definition, a low-skill and low-tech modus operandi. Most individuals are familiar with the use of a motor vehicle, and no
