Machete attack on two churches (Algeciras)

On the evening of 25 January 2023, a man armed with a machete attacked two Catholic churches in the southern Spanish city of Algeciras, in Andalusia. According to Spain's Interior Ministry, the assailant first entered the San Isidro church, where he reportedly sought to convert worshippers to Islam, then left and returned with a machete, attacking religious imagery. When the parish priest, Antonio Rodríguez, confronted him, he was stabbed in the shoulder and neck and seriously wounded. The attacker then moved to the nearby Nuestra Señora de La Palma church, around 200 metres away, where he continued the assault.

Diego Valencia, the church sacristan (sexton), confronted the attacker and tried to force him out. He was pursued into the adjacent Plaza Alta square and killed. In total one person was killed and several others, including the priest, were wounded. Police arrested the suspect, identified in later reporting as Yassine Kanjaa, a 25-year-old Moroccan national who had been living in Spain without authorisation since 2019. Spain's National Court (Audiencia Nacional) opened an investigation into a possible act of terrorism and subsequently treated the case as jihadist terrorism. Reporting indicates that questions about the suspect's mental health were later raised, and in November 2025 he was reportedly found not criminally responsible on grounds of severe mental illness and committed to a secure psychiatric facility.

This was a fatal terrorist attack carried out by a lone individual against churches and clergy, investigated by Spain's National Court as Islamist (jihadist) terrorism. It is not an instance of foreign-state hybrid warfare or sabotage: there is no indication of Russian or other state direction, and the available evidence points to a single perpetrator motivated by extremist religious ideology, with reported questions over his mental health later becoming central to the legal proceedings. It is included here for completeness as a terrorism incident, distinct from state-linked hybrid activity.