2016 Ohio State University attack
Terrorist Attack on The Ohio State University
On November 28, 2016, an Islamic terrorist vehicle-ramming and stabbing attack occurred at 9:52 a.m. EST at Ohio State University's Watts Hall in Columbus, Ohio. The attacker, Somali refugee Abdul Razak Ali Artan, was shot and killed by the first responding OSU police officer, and 13 people were hospitalized for injuries.
Authorities began investigating the possibility of the attack being an act of terrorism. On the next day, law enforcement officials stated that Artan was inspired by terrorist propaganda from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) and the late radical Muslim cleric, Anwar al-Awlaki. The Amaq News Agency released a statement claiming the attacker responded to an ISIL call to attack coalition citizens, though there is no evidence of direct contact between the group and Artan.
Background
There had been high concerns from federal law enforcement officials about car ramming and stabbing attacks being encouraged by online extremist propaganda due to the relative ease of committing them compared to bombings. In the weeks prior to the incident, ISIL had been urging its followers to copy a car ramming attack in Nice, France, that killed 86 people.
Earlier that year in February, a man attacked patrons at the Nazareth Restaurant in Columbus, wounding four before being shot and killed by responding police officers. About seven months later, a mass stabbing occurred at the Crossroads Center shopping mall in St.
The public source identifies “2016 Ohio State University attack” as terrorist Attack on The Ohio State University. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Ohio, State and University.
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Contemporary correspondence, administrative files and participant testimony can test how later narratives organized the event or institution. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 2, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q27925273. Authority coordinates are 40.000, -83.014. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2016.
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This entry incorporates text from “2016 Ohio State University attack” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.