ISIS ‘lone-wolf attacks’ could hit UK Christmas markets

Counter-terrorism officers are on high alert for a “lone-wolf attack” against Christmas shoppers and worshippers across the UK, the Daily Mirror can reveal.

Police and MI5 fear Islamic State supporters in Britain could be triggered into launching a knife or vehicle assault by diehard ISIS masterminds on extremist websites.

In the wake of the Strasbourg bloodshed in which three died on Tuesday evening and with a gunman still on the loose police fear it could inspire copycat attacks throughout Europe.

Last night hundreds of armed security officers were desperately trying to hunt down the Strasbourg shooter – who also left 12 injured.

Britain also is high on the terrorist target list, with more than 600 live MI5 investigations into possible plots underway and over 3,000 extremists who could turn violent at any time.

The current threat of “international terrorism” across Britain is “severe” – meaning an attack is “highly likely” and armed police are already patrolling Christmas markets nationally.

Lone wolf attackers are most feared as they leave little trace of their intentions, typically keeping murder plots to themselves and hardly preparing, thereby not triggering alerts to MI5.

Militarily Islamic State forces are being hammered by US-led Kurdish forces from the Syrian Democratic Forces in Syria and by police and army in neighbouring Iraq.

But it is feared some plotters, among up to 3,000 diehards hiding in tunnels and bunkers throughout the region, are persuading “terror messengers” to export calls to arms amongst European jihadis.

Messengers are either able to make phone calls or personally deliver instructions from the surviving ISIS leadership to agents in places like Turkey, to encourage attacks through extremist websites.

A senior counter-terror source told the Daily Mirror: “There is a hardcore of possibly more than 2,000 and as high as 3,000 ISIS terrorists holed up in Syria and Iraq.

“But they are basically in survival mode, living from day to day whilst still launching desperate and at times deadly counter-attacks against the SDF.

“But whilst their command and control systems are probably in tatters and they hold a tiny percentage of ground compared to a year ago, they are still extremely dangerous.

“They are still able to export their hate-filled and violent messages to sympathisers in areas of southern Turkey, asking supporters to launch attacks across Europe – and they are doing this on any number of extremist websites.

“This is when they are at their most dangerous, cornered and desperate and they are trying everything to persuade people to launch any kind of attack- as long as it gets attention.

“Christmas public gatherings are an obvious target, as we have seen in recent years, and everyone has to be on their guard for anything unusual.”

Police and MI5 have stepped up their monitoring of hired cars and vans after a spate of vehicle-born assaults across Europe in recent years.

In 2016 12 were killed and 56 injured when a truck was deliberately driven into crowds in Berlin.

One of the victims was the truck’s original driver, Łukasz Urban, who was found shot dead in the passenger seat.

The attacker was Anis Amri, a Tunisian failed asylum seeker. Four days after the attack, he was killed in a shootout with police near Milan in Italy.

But crucial to the investigation were ISIS propaganda messages from the Middle East encouraging European extremists to launch attacks.

Colonel Richard Kemp, a security expert and former adviser to the British government on terrorism told the Daily Mirror: “This time of year is the highest at risk period because of the combination of large crowds of people enjoying themselves, perhaps not paying as much attention to security as they would normally – and the fact that there is the Christian aspect to it.

“It is an obvious target and recent history has led us to believe we should all be on our guard at this time.

“Everybody should be vigilant against the possibility of an attack and Islamic State would of course like to hit back as a time when they are being hit so hard in the Middle East.”

Source: Mirror