News / Foreign Policy

UK facing significant risk of ISIL attack

Thursday, 22 January 2015 6:23 PM [ Last Update: Thursday, 22 January 2015 6:23 PM ]

UK Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond says the country is at “very significant” risk of ISIL attacks.

British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond has warned that the country is at “very significant” risk of attack by ISIL terrorists.

Speaking to reporters before at international conference on terrorism in London, Hammond described the ISIL as “probably the greatest single immediate threat to Britain's national security”.

He also warned against complacency in the fight to 'disrupt these plots before they come to the stage of an attack'.

“There's a very significant risk of an ISIL-inspired attack being planned and, if we are not successful in intercepting it, executed by ISIL sympathisers who live in the UK but are inspired by what is going on in Iraq and Syria,” he said.

“We know there are people out there who wish us harm and we have to be vigilant and we have to work extremely hard to make sure we identify and disrupt these plots before they come to the stage of an attack.”

Hammond further emphasized that the British security services were working around the clock to fight the terrorists.

The Foreign Secretary acknowledged that despite huge sums spent by the United States and Britain on Iraq's security forces in the years following the ousting of Saddam Hussein, they had fallen back into a 'state of disarray'.

'There is a big challenge ahead of us,' he told the reporters.

'We are renewing and regenerating the Iraqi security forces - re-equipping them, retraining them, reorganising them - but it will be months yet before they are ready to start significant combat operations against ISIL.'

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