Terrorism most immediate threat to UK, MI6 warns

The new head of MI6 Alex Younger has warned that the scale of the terrorism threat to the UK is ‘unprecedented’. Highlighting how ‘hybrid warfare’ was becoming an ‘increasingly dangerous phenomenon’, Younger said that the UK intelligence and security services had disrupted 12 terrorist plots since June 2013, with many threats arriving from ungoverned spaces in the Middle East - particularly Iraq and Syria. Additionally, Younger claimed that the alliance between Russia Syrian President Bashar al-Assad ran the risk of alienating people and suggesting that their actions were leading to further radicalisation and acting as a recruiting sergeant for Islamist extremist groups.