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Britain raises terror threat level




Britain raises terror threat level

August 30, 2014

(Translation of this article appears in Arabic section)

LONDON — Britain raised its terrorist threat level yesterday to “severe” over the risk posed by militants in Iraq and Syria, while Prime Minister David Cameron pledged tougher measures to prevent British citizens from fighting with the militant groups. Cameron said intelligence services believe at least 500 Britons have gone to fight in Syria and Iraq.

The heightened alert means the government believes an attack is “highly likely,” but officials stressed there was no specific threat and no reason to believe an attack was immanent.

“What we are facing in Iraq now with IS is a greater threat to our security than we have seen before,” Cameron said at press conference, adding that the terrorist group posed a greater danger than Al Qaeda.

The group has seized large swathes of Iraq and neighbouring Syria in recent months, triggering international fears of the emergence of a militant enclave.

The fighting is also estimated to have drawn hundreds of foreign fighters from across Europe, with leaders worrying their citizens could return home to launch attacks. To counter the threat they pose, Cameron said he will take steps to block citizens from travelling abroad to fight for radical causes. He is to speak to Parliament on Monday to outline those measures.

Among them are the removal of passports of Britons who want to travel abroad to fight, Cameron said.

Other steps could include stripping dual citizens of their British nationality and, in some cases, removing the citizenship of naturalised Britons.

In raising the threat level, Home Secretary Theresa May said the terrorist plots against the West “are likely to involve foreign fighters who have travelled there from the UK and Europe to take part in those conflicts.”

Since 2010, at least 150 people have been barred from entering Britain based on their views. Support for terrorist groups is also a criminal offence, and extremist broadcasts have been limited.

Last week, a video was released of a man believed to be a British fighter beheading US journalist James Foley, who went missing in Syria in 2012. Cameron said Foley’s execution was “clear evidence” that the threat was not something “thousands of miles away” to be ignored.

“We could be facing a terrorist state on the shores of the Mediterranean,” he said.

Earlier this month, the United States started air strikes against the targets in Iraq after the group’s sweeping advances forced thousands of the country’s minority to flee.

On Thursday, President Barack Obama said he had not yet devised a strategy for going after the militants inside Syria and remained focused on protecting US interests in Iraq. His remarks dampened expectations — fuelled by media leaks from US officials — that air strikes against targets inside Syria could be imminent.

Obama stressed that defeating the group will require a regional response to the threat, which he said cannot be solved through US military involvement alone.

Backed by the US aerial campaign, Kurdish Peshmerga troop are pursuing a major offensive against the militants and have already retaken several towns from them in recent weeks.


 














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