The Canadian authorities identified the gunman who fatally shot a soldier guarding the National War Memorial in Ottawa on Wednesday as Michael Zehaf-Bibeau, a Canadian born in 1982 who had a criminal record and recently converted to Islam. He was shot and killed in the attack.
The episode was the third deadly assault on people in uniform in North America this week, and the latest in a growing list of attacks in the West against soldiers, and in some cases civilians, by individuals who have professed affinity for radical Islam or sympathy for militant ideology.
Oct. 24, 2014: Hatchet-Wielding Man Charges Four New York Officers
![](https://webarchive.library.unt.edu/web/20141107133616im_/http://static01.nyt.com/images/2014/10/23/multimedia/nyc-hatchet-attack/nyc-hatchet-attack-videoSixteenByNine540.jpg)
A Hatchet Attack in Queens
A hatchet-wielding man injured two police officers before he was fatally shot by other officers in Queens on Thursday, the police said. A bystander was hit by a bullet.
Video by Deputy Commissioner, Public Information on Publish Date October 23, 2014.A man identified as Zale H. Thompson, 32, attacked four rookie New York City police officers as they posed for photographs in Queens, injuring two of them before he was fatally shot. The man had served in the Navy and had a criminal record in Ventura, Calif.
According to the SITE Intelligence Group, which monitors extremist activity, a commenter with a similar name as the suspect made remarks seemingly sympathetic to violent jihad in a YouTube video.
Oct. 20, 2014: Hit-and-Run Kills Canadian Soldier
![](https://webarchive.library.unt.edu/web/20141107133616im_/http://static01.nyt.com/images/2014/10/23/multimedia/ottawa-surveillance/ottawa-surveillance-videoSixteenByNine540.jpg)
Surveillance Footage of Ottawa Gunman
At a news conference, the Ottawa Police Service and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police released surveillance footage from outside the Canadian Parliament building during an attack Wednesday.
Video by AP on Publish Date October 23, 2014. Photo by Associated Press.Martin Rouleau-Couture drove his car into two Canadian soldiers, killing one of them, at a strip mall in Quebec. Canadian officials told NBC News that Mr. Rouleau, who converted to Islam last year, was “one of the 90 individuals the government had already announced it was monitoring.”
Sept. 25, 2014: Woman Is Beheaded in Oklahoma
![](https://webarchive.library.unt.edu/web/20141107133616im_/http://static01.nyt.com/images/2014/09/27/us/OKLAHOMA1/OKLAHOMA1-master180.jpg)
The police in Moore, Okla., said Alton Nolen beheaded a co-worker at a food-processing plant before he was shot and wounded by a company executive. Mr. Nolen had a criminal history and law enforcement officials said that he had recently converted to Islam, but that the F.B.I. found no connection between him and terrorist groups.
Sept. 26, 2014: ISIS Lieutenant Tries to Coordinate Attacks in Australia
A 22-year-old Sydney man was allegeldy asked by an Islamic State lieutenant to carry out a beheading in Australia on camera, the police said.
Days after that Sydney man was arrested, an 18-year-old man stabbed two counterterrorism officers outside Melbourne before one of the officers shot and killed him. The police described the man as a “known terror suspect” who had been seen carrying an Islamic State flag at a local shopping center.
May 24, 2014: 3 Shot Dead at Jewish Museum in Brussels
French authorities arrested Mehdi Nemmouche, a 29-year-old Frenchman with a long criminal history who had traveled to Syria last year to join radical Islamist fighters there.
French and Belgian officials said evidence linked Mr. Nemmouche to the Islamic State, and a French journalist held hostage in Syria in 2013 identified Mr. Nemmouche as one of his captors.
European officials said that the Brussels killings appeared to be the first committed in Europe by a European citizen returning from Syria.
May 22, 2013: Attack Near Military Barracks in South London
![](https://webarchive.library.unt.edu/web/20141107133616im_/http://static01.nyt.com/images/2013/05/23/world/london-attack-22/london2-master180.jpg)
Two British-born converts to Islam were found guilty of murdering a British soldier, who was run over with a car on a southeast London street and then hacked with knives and a meat cleaver as closed-circuit cameras recorded parts of the grisly scene.
One of the two men had been arrested by the Kenyan police on suspicion of planning to join the Shabab, an extremist group in Somalia. At his trial for the killing in London, the man called himself a “soldier of Allah.”
March 2012: Gunman Kills 7, Including 3 Soldiers, in France
Mohammed Merah, a self-proclaimed member of Al Qaeda, killed three French soldiers and, later, a rabbi and three Jewish children outside a Jewish day school in southwestern France.
Mr. Merah, a French-Algerian dual citizen, spent time in prison and was believed to have traveled to Pakistan and Afghanistan for combat training with Islamist fighters, and was on a government watch list. He was shot dead after a 30-hour standoff with police.
November 2009, July 2011 and April 2014: Fort Hood Attacks
![](https://webarchive.library.unt.edu/web/20141107133616im_/http://static01.nyt.com/images/2013/08/24/us/HASAN-copy/HASAN-copy-master180-v2.jpg)
On Nov. 5, 2009, Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, a United States Army psychiatrist, shot and killed 13 people and wounded 32 others at Fort Hood, Tex. An American-born Muslim of Palestinian descent, he said he was driven by a hatred of American military action in the Muslim world and a desire to protect Taliban leaders in Afghanistan. He was sentenced to death.
A 22-year-old Army private, Naser Jason Abdo, was arrested almost two years later and charged with trying to detonate an explosive device at a restaurant frequented by Fort Hood soldiers.
June 1, 2009: Gunman Kills Soldier Outside Arkansas Recruiting Station
Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad, a Tennessee man upset about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, opened fire on two soldiers, killing one and wounding another outside a military recruiting station in Little Rock, Ark.
He called himself a soldier in a Yemen-based affiliate of Al Qaeda and, in 2007, he traveled to Yemen where he stayed for 16 months.