Bungled Attacks, Small Operations Signal New Phase in Terror

As seen in European incidents, danger stems from less organized assaults carried out with less sophisticated weapons.

Two botched attacks in Europe in recent days signal that Islamist terror has entered a new phase, security officials say, one that is more disorganized and less sophisticated but risks spawning a growing number of assailants keen to kill with any means at hand.

When an Islamic State sympathizer tried to set off a bomb Tuesday night at a train station here, it failed to detonate with the intended force. Investigators suspect he used a faulty explosives recipe found online. The intended victims were able to flee, and the attacker was shot dead.

Last Monday, another would-be terrorist drove a sedan packed with guns, thousands of rounds of ammunition and two canisters of propane gas onto the Champs-Élysées in the heart of Paris. He rammed the lead vehicle of a police convoy, apparently intent on an attack. Instead, police said he died when he was overcome by fumes after the collision, and no one else was killed or injured.

The lack of direct training and know-how of many of this new breed of attacker means many fail. But their lack of connection to terror networks makes them hard for intelligence services to track, and their often unsophisticated weapons—such as knives or cars—are easy to get. So authorities fear the attacks will grow.

“We may be entering an era not of lone wolf, but stray dog attacks,” said one Western security official.

Such terrorism marks a shift from the kind of large-scale attacks carried out by extremist cells that have hit the Continent in the past, including Islamic State militants’ gun-and-bomb attacks in Paris in November 2015 and March 2016 attacks on Brussels airport and subway.

Authorities across Europe say they have seen an uptick in terror activity—often of the small-scale, less–organized kind—since a May 2016 call by Islamic State for its supporters to kill non-Muslims in the West.

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