Fears heightened over possible terror attack in NY amid Gaza violence – reports
There are fears of a possible terror attack in New York as violence escalates in Gaza, according to an intelligence report.
According to US media reports, the New York State Intelligence Centre has issued a new threat assessment that the war in Gaza is driving online threats and radicalisation, which has forced Governor Kathy Hochul to increase security and put more staff on the Joint Terrorism Task Force.
“The expansion of Israeli operations against Hamas in the Gaza Strip and increase in civilian casualties raises the likelihood that violent extremist threat actors will seek to conduct attacks against targets in the West, with New York State being a focus”, according to the report seen by CBS.
“Terrorist messaging has placed focus on attacking ‘soft targets’ such as protests, group gatherings, and other public events,” according to a report seen by CBS.
The governor said authorities believe there is “an increasing terror threat to NYC” and are working to discover many threats have been uncovered following the violence in Gaza.
“I am working hard at the state level with the control I have. I’ll be talking about this tomorrow, about exactly what we’re doing, and how many online threats we’ve uncovered, how many have been investigated, what the outcome is,” said Hochul.
The intelligence centre said the spread of antisemitic and anti-Palestinian discourse on social media is adding to an increase in hate crimes against Jews, Muslims, and Arabs.
“The expansion of Israeli operations against Hamas in the Gaza Strip and increase in civilian casualties raises the likelihood that violent extremist threat actors will seek to conduct attacks against targets in the West, with New York State being a focus. Terrorist messaging has placed focus on attacking ‘soft targets’ such as protests, group gatherings, and other public events,” the report added.
Last week, Hochul added $ 2.5 million to additional State Police investigators to the Federal Bureau of Investigation Joint Terrorism Task Force in New York City, Albany, Buffalo, and Rochester.
“We are working with all law enforcement, federal, state, and local, statewide. These are not just New York City events,” said Hochul.
The FBI said they made an arrest last week in Houston after expressing support for “killing individuals of certain faiths.”
“Our most immediate concern is that violent extremists, individuals or small groups, will draw inspiration from the events in the Middle East to carry out attacks against Americans going about their daily lives,” said FBI Director Christopher Wray.
“That includes not just homegrown violent extremists, inspired by a foreign terrorist organisation, but also domestic violent extremists targeting Jewish or Muslim communities. We’ve already seen that with the individual we arrested last week in Houston,” he added.
According to the latest figure from the NYPD Hate Crime Task Force, the number of anti-Jewish incidents spiked by 214 per cent in October and a number of bias incidents spiked by 124 per cent.
