Undercover cops & SAS in terror clamp for New Year’s Eve
Fears of lone attacker Clubs could be targets
There is enormous activity. It’s a huge event involving crowds EX-SPOOK TELLS OF BUILD-UP FOR BIG NIGHT
UNDERCOVER police have launched a huge clampdown as Islamic State terrorists threaten to unleash New Year’s Eve “hell”.
London’s West End and city centres throughout the North and Midlands will be flooded with more armed police and military undercover operatives than ever before after IS released a series of calls to “sleepers” and loner converts.
In one jihadi poster, two armed men in fatigues walk through an tunnel beneath the heading: “Wait for us on your New Year parties”.
And a video clip shows a Thamesside explosion alongside Big Ben.
Mobile undercover units will patrol cities ready to track suspicious targets. An SAS squadron is on standby in London to smash an attack if police fail to thwart it.
And operations are under way across the country to monitor hundreds of individuals with electronic eavesdropping. In the past, possible targets in London, Birmingham and Manchester have had undercover units posing as tramps with sniffer dogs as “pets”.
Last month armed police held a night exercise in Birmingham with actors as “victims”.
A former intelligence officer told the Mirror yesterday: “There is an enormous, unprecedented amount of activity. New Year’s Eve is a big event involving crowds in cities.
“Particular attention will be given to clubs and bars – with a focus on gay bars because of IS homophobia.”
In London hundreds of thousands of revellers will be protected by more than 3,000 uniformed officers.
The national threat is currently “severe”, meaning “highly likely”.
THE battle to wipe out IS is not over because Syria’s president Assad is “unwilling or unable” to defeat them, says UK Maj Gen Felix Gedney, deputy chief the US-led mission to wipe out the terrorists.