The people of Britain should remain vigilant towards the threat of terrorism throughout the winter months and festive season, the UK’s Ministry of Defence police force warned on Monday.
“With the ongoing impact of the coronavirus pandemic on our lives, it is understandable that the threat from terrorism isn’t necessarily front of mind for everyone across the country. But the threat of terrorism has not gone away,” the Ministry of Defence Police (MDP) said in a
statement.
Assistant Chief Constable Andrea Bishop warned against complacency and urged the public to “remain vigilant and to report anything suspicious or that just doesn’t seem right.”
“A collective and proactive community effort to security will always be the most effective defence that we have against terrorism,” she said. “By working together, we can all help to keep each other safe.”
The MDP is a
specialist police force that protects people and assets essential to the UK’s defence and national infrastructure.
Home Secretary Priti Patel said at the time that it was a precautionary measure and was not based on any specific threat. “The public should continue to remain vigilant and report any suspicious activity to the police,” she said.
A series of Islamic terrorist attacks have hit Europe in the past two months.
On Nov. 2,
four people were killed and 22 wounded when gunshots were fired at crowds at six different locations in the city centre in Vienna, the capital of Austria. The attacker, who was shot dead by police, was a 20-year-old dual citizen of Austria and North Macedonia, who had previously attempted to travel to Syria to join the ISIS terrorist group.
On Oct. 29, a 21-year-old Tunisian man, shouting “Allahu Akbar,”
beheaded an elderly woman and killed two more people at a church in Nice, a city in southern France.
On Oct. 16, a 18-year-old Chechen refugee
beheaded a French history teacher in broad daylight outside his school near Paris, after he used caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad in a class on freedom of expression.
