Target: Britain

MI5 has announced a number of terrorist plots against Britain are under surveillance.

BBC News:

MI5 knows of 30 terror plots threatening the UK and is keeping 1,600 individuals under surveillance, the security service's head has said.

Dame Eliza Manningham-Buller warned the threat was "serious" and "growing".

She said future attacks could be chemical or nuclear and that many of the plots were linked to al-Qaeda.

The Prime Minister agrees, the Guardian:

Tony Blair today backed the assessment of the head of MI5 that the "very real" threat from terrorism would last a generation.

In a rare public speech yesterday, Dame Eliza Manningham-Buller, director general of the intelligence agency, expressed concern at the rate at which young people, including teenagers, were being radicalised and indoctrinated.

The full speech from the Director General is available from the Times of London.

The Guardian reported last month:

Britain has become the main target for a resurgent al-Qaida, which has successfully regrouped and now presents a greater threat than ever before, according to counter-terrorist officials. They have revised their views about the strength of the network abroad, and the methods terrorists are able to use in the UK.

Intelligence chiefs with access to the most comprehensive and up to date information have told the Guardian that al-Qaida has substantially recovered its organisation in Pakistan, despite a four-year military campaign to seek out and kill its leaders. In that time, the organisation has become much more coherent, with a strong core and a regular supply of volunteers.

More worrying, officials say, is evidence of new techniques that would-be terrorists within the UK have adopted. The structure of individual al-Qaida-inspired groups is much more like the old Provisional IRA cells, with self-contained units comprising a lead organiser/planner, a quartermaster in charge of weapons and explosives acquisition and training, and several volunteers.