Up to 20 British citizens were being trained in Pakistan to launch Mumbai-style terror attacks on Britain, the Daily Telegraph reported on Thursday.
The claim came a day after western intelligence said they had foiled a plot by Pakistan-based terrorists to bomb a series of high-profile targets in Britain, France and Germany.
Al-Qaeda camps
In a front-page report, the newspaper said young British Muslims, who all held British passports, were thought to have travelled to tribal areas of Pakistan to be trained in camps run by Al-Qaeda and its affiliates.
“They are being trained to use firearms as well as explosives so that they can carry out shooting sprees in Britain,” it said quoting intelligence sources.
One source in Islamabad was reported as saying there were “15 to 20 Britons in the camps”.
The information, it said, came after American drone strikes on training camps in north and south Waziristan to pre-empt “plans” to attack British, French and German cities.
“The plans would have seen terrorists sent on to the streets, probably in capital cities, to shoot at random before heading into landmark buildings, as in the Mumbai outrage in 2008,” said the newspaper.
Intelligence sources, it claimed, said the attacks would have been coordinated for “maximum impact” and may have been aimed at financial institutions.
Some of the information was reported to have come from a German national Ahmed Siddiqui held in Kabul. Siddiqui, (30), allegedly attended a mosque in Hamburg which was also attended by leaders of the 9/11 attacks.
