News / Politics

Daesh terrorists plan to attack UK within weeks: Media

Saturday, 05 December 2015 11:17 AM [ Last Update: Saturday, 05 December 2015 2:58 PM ]

French fire brigade members aid an injured individual near the Bataclan concert hall following fatal shootings in Paris, France, November 13, 2015. ©Reuters

Takfiri Daesh terrorists are planning to carry out Paris-style attacks in the United Kingdom within weeks, British media say.

Citing informed European counter-terrorism sources, the reports said the Daesh terror group, which is mainly operating in Iraq and Syria, has identified the UK as its next target.

”Concern in Europe, particularly in the UK now that what we saw in Paris, an attack like that, could play out again, perhaps in the United Kingdom, in the weeks ahead,” CNN terrorism analyst Paul Cruickshank said, the Telegraph reported.

Cruickshank said he had been told about the threat by a European counter-terrorism official, the paper added.

British-born terrorists who have traveled to Syria and Iraq to join Daesh ranks “have been tasked to return to the United Kingdom to launch an attack against the UK,” he said.

The analyst said that the concerns from intelligence agencies “have been compounded” by the parliamentary vote on Wednesday evening that authorized British airstrikes for the first time against Daesh in Syria.

The UK conducted its first bombing of Daesh positions in Syria after the government won a parliamentary debate on an air campaign against purported Daesh targets in the Arab state.

This is while the British government has been among the major supporters of Takfiri groups operating in Syria since March 2011.

Two British Tornados taxi on the runway, after returning from a mission, at Royal Air Force Akrotiri in southern Cyprus December 3, 2015. ©Reuters

British Defense Secretary Michael Fallon has said that the airstrikes in Syria could last three years.

The warning against the UK came just weeks after Aine Lesley Davis - an associate of Daesh terrorist Mohammed Emwazi, known as “Jihadi John,” was arrested in Turkey last month.

Davis was detained with a group of others who reportedly had plans for an attack in Istanbul in parallel with the gun and bomb rampage in the French capital, Paris, which left 130 people dead on November 13.

He is one of a group of British terrorists believed to have been assigned to hold foreign prisoners, alongside Emwazi, who appeared in videos showing the beheading of Western hostages.

According to Charles Farr, head of the Office for Security and Counter-Terrorism in the UK's Home Office, between 750 and 800 Britons have gone to Syria and Iraq to fight for Daesh terror group. Official reports say that up to 400 are now back in the UK.

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