British Muslims Are Seen Moving Into Mideast Terrorism

After two suicide bombers in Israel were found to be British citizens, Britain faced suggestions today that young British Muslims, previously associated with militant Islamic groups in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen and elsewhere, had shifted their focus to terrorism in the Middle East. The two Britons were identified as Asif Hanif, 21, who died in a bomb attack that killed three people in a Tel Aviv nightclub on Tuesday, and an accomplice, Omar Sharif, 27. They represented the first known instance in recent years of Britons prepared to kill themselves by setting off a terror attack. The news seemed to leave British officials stunned. “We think that the terrorists had British passports, which is something especially sad,” said Sherard Cowper-Coles, Britain’s ambassador in Israel. As on previous occasions when British Muslims were found to have been fighting for the Taliban in Afghanistan or planning terrorism in Britain, the two British suicide bombers appear to have grown up in innocuous, middle-class or blue-collar environments far from the conflicts they came to espouse as their own. That seemed to differentiate them from the more usual image of suicide bombers molded by the hardships of Gaza or the West Bank. Full Story