A 16-year-old Jewish girl was hospitalized with head and facial injuries after being attacked with glass bottles in a “deliberate and violent” incident in London, prompting police to investigate the attack as a potential antisemitic hate crime.
The attack occurred Monday in Stamford Hill, a neighborhood with a significant Jewish population. The girl was part of a group of schoolgirls walking to a rehearsal when a man on a balcony at the Woodberry Down Estate began throwing multiple glass bottles at them.
The Jewish neighborhood watch group Shomrim described the attack as antisemitic and condemned it as "abhorrent." In a statement on X, Shomrim said that the street had been “covered in shattered glass following an antisemitic attack on Orthodox Jewish schoolchildren.”
“The sheer volume of glass scattered across the area resembles the aftermath of a riot. The force and distance of the thrown glass bottles reveal the deliberate and violent nature of this act,” the group said. “These young children were targeted simply for their visibly Jewish identity.”
The injured teen was taken to the hospital, where her injuries were determined to be “non-life changing,” but she sustained “significant hematomas and facial grazes.”
According to the Daily Mail, a Metropolitan Police spokesperson said that the incident is being investigated as a potential antisemitic hate crime. The group Campaign Against Antisemitism told the Daily Mail in a statement that “This incident did not take place in a vacuum.”
“Over the past year, we have repeatedly warned of the dangerous consequences of Jew-hate going unchecked,” the organization explained. “This is the reality in Britain right now. Jewish children cannot even walk home without fear of being targeted in violent attacks.”
