Prime Minister David Cameron warned yesterday that Islamic State militants based in Syria and Iraq were planning specific attacks against Britain and posed an existential threatto the West.
Cameron was speaking after an Islamist gunman killed up to 30 British tourists in an attack last Friday that British politicians have described as the single worst assault on their nationals since the bombing of the London underground in 2005.
“It is an existential threat because what is happening here is the perversion of a great religion and the creation of this poisonous death cult is seducing too many young minds,” Cameron told BBC radio.
“There are people in Iraq and Syria who are plotting to carry out terrible acts in Britain and elsewhere and as long as Isil [Islamic State] exists in those two countries we are at threat,” said Cameron.
Britain’s international terror threat is currently set at “severe,” its second highest level, and a rung which means an attack is “highly likely.” Police say they have launched one of their largest counter-terrorism operations in a decade after the murders in Tunisia.
Writing in The Daily Telegraph newspaper, Cameron signalled he wanted authorities to take a tougher line against Muslim extremists in Britain to do more to challenge what he said were their unacceptable views.
This poisonous death cult is seducing too many young minds
“We must be more intolerant of intolerance – rejecting anyone whose views condone the Islamist extremist narrative,” Cameron wrote.
Meanwhile Islamic State suicide bombers blew up two trucks in the heart of the northeastern Syrian city of Hasaka and a fire erupted at petroleum storage tanks and a textile firm after shelling by the militants, a Syrian army source said yesterday.
The army source was quoted by state television as saying the militants had targeted a major roundabout and near a mosque in the southeastern Ghwyran neighbourhood, a residential area that the militants entered since Thursday in a lighting assault to seize the government-held parts of the city.
The Syrian army source did not disclose details on casualties but said a number of “martyrs fell”.
“Fire erupted at the textile plant and a number of storage tanks,” the source said without giving further details.
The militants have deployed scores of suicide bombers against army checkpoints in recent days that has enabled them to take up positions deeper inside the city.
Islamic State confirmed the suicide bombings they said targeted army checkpoints in the Ghwyran city and in a statement claimed they had advanced to new positions in the city in the Aziziya district.
Hasaka is divided into areas run separately by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s government and Kurdish authorities and has an ethnically and religiously mixed population of Arabs and Kurds.
Islamic State is back on the offensive after two weeks of defeats at the hands of Kurdish-led forces, supported by air strikes from US-led forces.