ISIL IS PLANNING ‘INDISCRIMINATE ATTACKS ON INNOCENT CIVILIANS’ AND BRITAIN FACES ITS BIGGEST TERRORIST THREAT SINCE THE DAYS OF IRA BOMBINGS IN THE 1970S, SAYS THE UK’S NEW ANTI-TERROR CHIEF.

ISIL risk as great as IRA of ’70s: new watchdog

• British citizens are facing a level of threat from terrorists not seen since the IRA bombings of the 1970s, the country’s new terrorism watchdog has warned.

Max Hill said ISIL was planning “indiscriminate attacks on innocent civilians” on a scale similar to those perpetrated by the IRA 40 years ago. He told The Daily Telegraph that Islamists were targeting U.K. cities and said there was an “enormous ongoing risk which none of us can ignore.”

The warning comes just days after Hill, one of Britain’s leading terrorism prosecutors, was unveiled as the new independent reviewer of terrorism legislation. It follows a 30-year legal career during which he helped convict the 21/7 bomb plotters and break up terror cells.

He made plain his fears that the scale of threat facing Britain today has not been seen since the 1970s.

“It is possible to point to distinctions in terms of the mindset, organization and strategy of different terrorist groups and therefore it would be wrong to draw a simple comparison between Irish republicanism and the ideology of so-called Islamic State,” Hill said.

“But in terms of the threat that’s represented, I think the intensity and the potential frequency of serious plot planning — with a view to indiscriminate attacks on innocent civilians of whatever race or colour in metropolitan

I THINK THAT THERE IS UNDOUBTEDLY SIGNIFICANT ONGOING RISK.

areas — represents an enormous ongoing risk that none of us can ignore.

“So I think that there is undoubtedly significant ongoing risk which is at least as great as the threat to London in the ’70s when the IRA were active on the mainland.”

At the time Britain was facing a concerted terrorist campaign from Irish republicans that saw pubs, train stations and Parliament repeatedly targeted in bomb attacks.

It was a battle that would only truly end with the Good Friday Agreement in 1998, signed by then-prime minister Tony Blair, which secured peace in Northern Ireland.

He also raised concern about the hundreds of British extremists who fled to fight in Syria and Iraq with ISIL but are set to return after a string of military defeats.

“It’s an enormous concern that large numbers — we know this means at least hundreds of British citizens who have left this country in order to fight — are now returning or may be about to return,” Hill said.