Lone actor terror attacks rise as AFP sounds alarm on minors being radicalised online

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Most terror attacks aren’t large-scale incidents committed by groups of people but instead carried out by a solitary radical using everyday objects in highly populated areas.…

Most terror attacks aren’t large-scale incidents committed by groups of people but instead carried out by a solitary radical using everyday objects in highly populated areas.

So-called “lone actor” attacks made up 93 per cent of all terror attacks in Western countries this year, according to the Global Terror Index, and have proven increasingly hard to stop for intelligence and security organisations.

Now Australian authorities have raised another major concern: Those carrying out the attacks are getting younger.

Most recently, Polish authorities said a 24-year-old man had become radicalised toward the far-right before driving into a busy central square in Krakow and opening fire. Six people were killed and 15 others were wounded.

Two teenagers in Darwin were arrested and charged with allegedly planning a mass-casualty event just days prior to the attack in Poland. They remain before the the courts.

Australian Federal Police (AFP) revealed on Thursday that minors accounted for 40 per cent of all active joint counterterrorism cases after AFP Deputy Commissioner Sandra Booth in October described the issue as “one of our biggest challenges in history”.

“Australia is at a crossroads of youth crime as young vulnerable and impressionable individuals are being radicalised at rapid speed,” she said.

Experts believe the rise has come from children and teenagers being radicalised online through social media and video games, regardless of political affiliation.

“(Minors) are being radicalised on platforms that initially seem completely innocuous and harmless such as TikTok, Instagram, Discord and, most frighteningly of all because I have a child who spends much of her time on it, Roblox,” Edith Cowan University School of Science lecturer Nicola Lockhart told 7NEWS.com.au.

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