Britain has been identified as the next target for a Paris-style terror attack by Islamic State militants, a US-based Middle East security expert has warned.
The attack is likely to be launched by British-born Islamist terrorists travelling back from Syria, Paul Cruickshank, the terrorism analyst for American news channel CNN, has said.
He claimed that he has been told about the threat by a senior European counter-terrorism official.
Cruickshank said the source told him: “There’s intelligence that has been obtained by European security agencies that Islamic State in Syria and Iraq is aiming to hit the United Kingdom next.
“The intelligence suggesting that British IS operatives in Syria and Iraq have been tasked to return to the United Kingdom to launch an attack against the UK. These concerns have been compounded by that vote on Thursday in the British House of Commons authorising British airstrikes for the first time against IS in Syria.”
Cruickshank, who has reported extensively on Al Qaeda, IS and other Islamist extremist groups, added that it is “not clear how imminent this threat is”.
Meanwhile, a UK-based radicalisation expert told ‘Daily Mirror’ that the UK is under threat from home-grown jihadis.
Suraj Lakhani, lecturer in criminology and sociology specialising in radicalisation and violent extremism at Sussex University, fears that young British Muslims are being radicalised by British extremists.
“There is always going to be a fear and a risk that this radicalisation we are seeing is happening within the UK. We know that 750 to 1,000 British Muslims have gone to fight with IS and that some of them have come back.
“The reality is that there is a high terror alert and there is a threat it’s (Paris attacks) something that could happen in the UK,” Lakhani said.
Following the attacks in Paris on November 13 in which 130 people were killed and after the launch of air strikes on Syria this week, the UK remains on a high terror alert.