Britain prevents seven terror attacks over six months

LONDON

Britain’s security services stopped seven terrorist attacks over the last six months, Prime Minister David Cameron said Monday in the wake of the Paris terror attacks.

He told BBC radio that Britain was aware of cells in Syria that were “radicalizing” Western recruits and sending them back to carry out attacks on U.K. streets.

Cameron’s remarks came as the government announced plans to recruit 1,900 security and intelligence officers.

“Our security intelligence services have stopped something like seven attacks in the last six months, albeit attacks planned on a smaller scale, but that’s one of the reasons why we’re strengthening security and intelligence services with this announcement today because, as I’ve put it before, this is the struggle of our generation,” he said in an interview from the G20 summit in Antalya, Turkey.

“Even if we got a political solution in Syria and eradicated ISIL [Daesh] in Syria and Iraq you’ve still got Boko Haram in Nigeria, you’ve got al-Shabaab in Somalia, you have al-Qaeda still in parts of Afghanistan and elsewhere.”

The extra officers for domestic security agency MI5, foreign service MI6 and communications agency GCHQ comes from a 15 percent rise in funding, which will also see airport security spending doubled.

There will also be regular security assessments at airports outside of the country, particularly those used by large numbers of British travelers.

Earlier this month, the U.K. suspended all flights to the Egyptian resort of Sharm el Sheikh in response to the downing of a Russian airliner in a suspected terror attack.

The three British intelligence agencies currently employ around 13,000 officers.