UK :Isis planning 'enormous and spectacular attacks', anti-terror chief warns

The UK is facing the threat of “enormous and spectacular attacks” by Islamic State as the extremist group attempts to wage war on western lifestyles, the national head of counter-terrorism has warned.

The Metropolitan police assistant commissioner, Mark Rowley, said in a briefing to journalists on the UK terror threat that while in recent years Isis had urged would-be jihadis to attack the police and military, its mission had since widened.

He said: “In recent months we’ve seen … more plans to attack western lifestyle … [Isis has gone] from that narrow focus on police and military as symbols of the state to something much broader. And you see a terrorist group that has big ambitions for enormous and spectacular attacks, not just the types that we’ve seen foiled to date.

“You see a terrorist group that while on the one hand has been acting as a cult to use propaganda to radicalise people to act in their name … you also see them trying to build bigger attacks.”

Rowley said Isis was encouraging supporters who had received military training in Syria to enter northern Europe to stage attacks.

He added: “[The] shared effort to look for any possible links of those networks or other networks that have reached the UK is obviously a massively high priority.”

In the last three years the number of terror suspect arrests has increased by 57%, compared with the previous three years. About half of these have led to a charge.

British nationals accounted for 77% of those arrested last year. Overall 14% of those arrested in 2015 were female, while 13% were 20 or younger.

The number of women, girls and teenagers being arrested was a new trend, Rowley said. “That would not have been the picture that one would have seen a few years ago. That is an indication of that radicalisation, the effect of the propaganda and the way the messages of Daesh [Isis] are resonating with some individuals.”

More than 20 families and about 50 young people have been through family court proceedings in the past year because of concerns about radicalisation, according to Scotland Yard.

Police are beginning to use specialist psychologists to advise both on how to deal with people at risk of being influenced by extremists and on terrorists in the event of an attack.

The number of trained firearms officers across the UK is also being increased following the Paris attacks in which 129 people were killed.

Official advice was issued at the end of last year for the public to “run, hide, tell” in the event of similar attacks – meaning get as far away as possible, hide, and if possible call the police.