Danish buses burnt and vandalised in suspected anti-Israel attacks

Four Danish buses were destroyed in a suspected anti-Israel arson attack in the early hours of Friday morning, while a fifth bus was found nearby daubed in anti-Israeli graffiti.

The incident in the Danish capital of Copenhagen comes just days after city authorities ordered the removal of adverts from a pro-Palestinian group calling for boycotts of Israeli goods.

A police spokesman confirmed that there was a suspected political motive, but the group behind the adverts, the Danish-Palestinian Friendship Association, condemned the attack as “a criminal act”, saying it sought only “to influence the public and authorities to do more for Palestinians’ right to self-determination”.

The banned ads showed two Palestinian women saying: “Our conscience is clean. We neither buy products from the Israeli settlements nor invest in the settlement industry.” The bus company later removed them, saying they were “unnecessarily offensive”. 

In January, Jewish security guard Dan Uzan, 37, was standing outside a Copenhagen shul when he was shot and killed by Islamist gunman Omar El-Hussein, a common criminal who was radicalised in prison.