arson attacks<\/a> in London, including seven arrests related to a foiled plot to potentially target a venue related to the Jewish community, police said Tuesday.\n <\/p>\n\n The seven arrests in relation to the foiled plot were conducted within the last 48 hours, as part of what police called \u201ca proactive investigation into alleged conspiracy to commit arson.\u201d\n <\/p>\n
\n \u201cAt this time, while it is believed that the intended target of this conspiracy is a venue related to the Jewish community, the specific target or venue is not known,\u201d London\u2019s Metropolitan Police said in a statement.\n <\/p>\n
\n Arrests were carried out in the English towns of Harpenden and Stevenage, and near the city of Birmingham, as well as the west London suburb of Ealing.\n <\/p>\n
\n Police said that since the March 23 arson attack in the Golders Green neighborhood of London, in which several ambulances belonging to a Jewish volunteer rescue organization were set on fire outside a synagogue, a total of eight people have been charged with arson-related offences and 13 people remain in police custody or on bail under investigation.\n <\/p>\n
\n \u201cOur message is clear, we will not tolerate this intimidation of our communities, and will pursue those responsible,\u201d said Vicki Evans, the police\u2019s senior national coordinator of counterterrorism policing.\n <\/p>\n
\n \u201cOne of our key lines of inquiry is whether criminal proxies \u2013 that is to say people being paid money to carry out a crime, are being used to commit any of these arsons,\u201d Evans added.\n <\/p>\n
\n In a separate statement on Tuesday, police said a 17-year-old boy has been charged with \u201carson not endangering life\u201d in connection with a counterterrorism investigation into an arson attack on a synagogue in the Kenton area of northwest London. Minor damage was caused to the synagogue\u2019s premises and nobody was injured in that attack, police said. The boy charged is a British national who cannot be named for legal reasons.\n <\/p>\n
\n It comes as Britain\u2019s Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis warned on Sunday that a \u201csustained campaign of violence and intimidation against the Jewish community of the UK is gathering momentum,\u201d pointing to a series of arson and attempted arson attacks targeting the community.\n <\/p>\n
\n Mirvis called the targeting of the synagogue in Kenton a \u201ccowardly arson attack,\u201d also noting the examples of an attack against a synagogue in the north London neighborhood of Finchley last Wednesday and an attempted attack on another building in Hendon, in northwest London, last Friday.\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"London\u00a0\u2014\u00a0 British counterterrorism police arrested eight more people in connection with an investigation into suspected arson attacks in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":543158,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-543157","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-kingdom","8":"tag-gb","9":"tag-great-britain","10":"tag-greatbritain","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom","14":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/543157","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=543157"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/543157\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/543158"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=543157"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=543157"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=543157"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}