IS losses in Syria ‘make terror attacks in UK more likely’
BRITAIN is at greater risk of a Paris-style terror attack as Islamic State ‘begins to crack’ and lose ground in Syria and Iraq, a top coalition spokesman has warned.
Colonel Steve Warren said the jihadist group was more likely to lash out against the UK and the West as waves of airstrikes destroyed its fighting strength and finances.
Under-pressure extremists had resorted to increasingly chilling tactics to hold territory, including hiding booby-trap bombs inside copies of the Koran, he said.
He spoke out after the British head of the EU’s crime-fighting organisation said up to 5,000 terrorists could be plotting bloodshed in Europe after returning from fighting with IS. Some 300 are said to be in the UK.
In the aftermath of the atrocities in Paris last November, it emerged several of the terrorists had been able to travel unhindered across the continent because of the Schengen passport-free area.
At a briefing in London, Colonel Warren, spokesman for the anti- IS coalition, insisted bombing runs and counter-terror measures were crushing the jihadists in
‘Squeezing the enemy’
their self-proclaimed Islamic ‘ caliphate’. He said: ‘ As we continue to squeeze this enemy, our assessment is that one of the responses to that – it really is in desperation, that they are going to want to show the world that they are still viable – is through a high-visibility attack outside of their so-called caliphate borders.’
Colonel Warren argued that an attack like the one in Paris, where 130 people were murdered in co- ordinated strikes across the city, was not a sign of strength. He said: ‘Because they are beginning to stumble a little bit, they are trying to either distract or prove that they are not finished yet.’
Flows of foreign fighters into Iraq and Syria had decreased as would-be jihadis realised this caliphate was not ‘all unicorns and rainbows’ and would spell certain death, he said.
But Shashank Joshi, from the Royal United Services Institute security think-tank, said that while anti-IS forces had made several important gains, they had done this by ‘plucking the low-hanging fruit’ and he warned it would take years to defeat IS.