Terrorists in UK Seeking to Obtain Guns for Paris-Style Attacks

The current threat to the UK from international terrorism remains ‘severe’, meaning an attack is highly likely, according to the statement of the chief of the National Counter Terrorism Policing (NaCTSO).

MOSCOW (Sputnik) — A half of terror plots foiled by UK law enforcement over the past years involved terrorists seeking to obtain guns, the chief of the National Counter Terrorism Policing (NaCTSO) said Monday.

"The current threat to the UK from international terrorism remains ‘severe’, meaning an attack is highly likely. Of the attack planning plots that we have disrupted since 2013, nearly half of these have involved a firearms angle to some degree," NaCTSO head Mark Rowley said in a statement.

The NaCTSO and the National Crime Agency (NCA) have joined forces in a bid to get guns off British streets. They urged citizens to come forward with information on who may own or have access to illegal firearms.

NCA’s Director General Lynne Owens stressed that "suppressing the availability" of illegal firearms in the country had never been more important.

"Criminal networks, who think nothing about who they sell firearms to, present a significant route by which extremist groups will try to access the sort of weapons used in recent attacks in Europe," she said.

According to the NCA, police foiled at least 10 terrorist attacks in the country in the last two years, which could have potentially led to an incident similar to last year’s gun and bomb attacks in Paris, which killed 130 people.