British counter-terrorism officers are on excessive alert amid fears of copycat assaults following the New Orleans New 12 months’s Day and Magdeburg Christmas market tragedies.

Authorities are involved that Islamic State supporters may very well be provoked to launch terrorist assaults, together with knife and car assaults, after two latest main assaults within the West with alleged ties to Islamic extremism.

A spokesperson for UK Counter Terrorism Police mentioned Thursday that officers “frequently assess worldwide occasions” to know if there are any implications for nationwide safety.

Britain is excessive on the terrorist goal record, with greater than 600 stay MI5 investigations into attainable plots and over 3,000 suspected extremists.

The specter of worldwide terrorism within the UK is taken into account “substantial” as an assault is “probably” and armed police are patrolling iconic websites that may very well be focused.

“We have already got hostile car measures in place in lots of places however you must ask your self how a lot do you need to do, it is not attainable to guard all over the place, nonetheless iconic websites ought to take note of the menace. It is all the time a fragile steadiness between safety, security and our freedoms. There are such a lot of streets within the UK that you’d name iconic.”

“It is not possible to guard all of them from somebody who can simply leap right into a automobile and drive on the public. Intelligence is the one actual solution to cease an assault like this, earlier than they get into the car.”

William Wechsler, former U.S. deputy assistant secretary of protection, mentioned Thursday that the rise of an Islamic State-aligned HTS in Syria has been seen by extremist sympathizers as a “harbinger of nice victory.”

He mentioned, “Just some years in the past there was an assault in New York Metropolis impressed by the Islamic State the identical 12 months there was an assault in London… so the specter of Islamic State directed and impressed violence has not gone away, in actual fact it might be more and more directed partially by among the information that comes out of the area the place Islamic State is most energetic.

“There’s an ideology behind the Islamic State of the recreation of the caliphate that many who share that specific imaginative and prescient for Islam discover very engaging. After they see terrorists and others that subscribe to that imaginative and prescient achieve success in locations like Syria that additional signifies of their minds their spiritual mission and may encourage them in the direction of assaults elsewhere as properly.”