Norway hikes terror threat level to ‘high’ over threats to Jewish, Israeli sites
Alert comes week after neighboring Denmark charged 2 suspects for detonating hand grenades near Israel’s embassy
Norway has raised its terrorism threat assessment to the second-highest level due to an increased risk of attacks against Jewish and Israeli targets, the national police directorate said on Tuesday.
Last week, police in neighboring Denmark charged two men suspected of detonating hand grenades near Israel’s Copenhagen embassy, while police in Sweden are investigating a suspected shooting near the Israeli diplomatic mission in Stockholm.
Norwegian police officers, who are normally unarmed, will now carry guns nationwide as a result of the decision by the PST security service to raise the threat level, the directorate said.
“PST raises the terror threat level in Norway from moderate to high as a result of the ongoing escalation of the conflict in the Middle East,” the police said in a statement.
“It is primarily the threat to Jewish and Israeli targets that has been further intensified,” the statement said.
The PST risk assessment was raised from level three (moderate) to level four (high), on PST’s five-point scale where the top end of the range would indicate imminent danger.
National Police Commissioner Benedicte Bjoernland said there was an increased likelihood of attempted terrorism.
“We have a number of measures in place to protect the population,” she said in a statement.
Sweden in August last year raised its terrorist alert to the second-highest level after Koran burnings outraged Muslims and triggered threats from jihadists. In May, its domestic security agency accused Iran of using criminal networks to target Israeli or Jewish interests in the Scandinavian country.
Meanwhile, Germany has arrested several people for allegedly spying or planning attacks on behalf of Russia.
In Britain, the head of Britain’s domestic intelligence agency said Tuesday the country is facing a “staggering rise” in attempts at assassination, sabotage, and other crimes by both Russia and Iran, as the two states recruit criminals to “do their dirty work.”
MI5 Director General Ken McCallum said his agents and police have tackled 20 “potentially lethal” plots backed by Iran since 2022 and warned that it could expand its targets in the United Kingdom if conflicts in the Middle East deepen.
The spy chief said if the crisis escalates with Israel launching a major attack in response to Iran’s recent missile barrage, there is the risk “of an increase in — or broadening of — Iranian state aggression in the UK.”
In a rare public speech, McCallum said there is a risk that Israel’s conflicts with Iran-backed terror groups — Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon as well as the Houthi rebels in Yemen — could trigger attacks in the UK, though so far the crisis has not translated “at scale into terrorist violence” in Britain.
The number of state-threat investigations undertaken by MI5 has risen by 48 percent in the past year, with Iran, Russia, and China the main perpetrators, McCallum told journalists at the UK’s counterterrorism command center in London.
The UK’s official terror threat level stands at “substantial,” the middle of a five-point scale, meaning an attack is likely, and McCallum said that since 2017, MI5 and the police have disrupted 43 late-stage militant plots and saved “numerous lives.”
MI5 has faced criticism for its failure to stop deadly attacks, including a 2017 suicide bombing that killed 22 people at an Ariana Grande concert in Manchester.
“The first 20 years of my career here were crammed full of terrorist threats,” McCallum said. “We now face those alongside state-backed assassination and sabotage plots, against the backdrop of a major European land war.”
MI5, he said, “has one hell of a job on its hands.”
