MI6 spy chief warns Russia’s Aleppo bombing campaign is WORSENING terror threat to Britain
Alex Younger also revealed that MI6 has disrupted 12 major terrorist plots in Britain since June 2013
RUSSIA is worsening the terror threat to Britain with its Aleppo bombing campaign - as it turns the Syrian city into “a desert”, the chief of MI6 has said.
Secret Intelligence Service boss Alex Younger issued the new warning as he gave the first ever public speech from inside MI6 today.
The spymaster also revealed fresh details on how ISIS is targeting the UK from deep inside Syria, branding the threat’s scale as “unprecedented”.
And he disclosed how MI6 agents are “taking the fight to the enemy” by penetrating terror organisations “upstream”.
Mr Younger – known as ‘C’ - called on the Kremlin to halt its destruction of besieged and starving Aleppo.
If President Putin and the tyrannical Assad regime does not relent and agree to peace talks, he predicted they will reap a whirlwind by radicalising potentially millions more.
Dubbing the fate of Syria’s biggest city “a human tragedy” and “heart breaking”, Mr Younger insisted: “In Aleppo, Russia and the Syrian regime seek to make a desert and call it peace.
“We cannot be safe from the threats that emanate from that land unless the civil war is brought to an end.
“I believe Russia’s conduct in Syria will, if they do not change course, provide a tragic example of the perils of forfeiting legitimacy.
“In defining as a terrorist anyone who opposes a brutal government, they alienate precisely that group who has to be on side if the extremists are to be defeated”.
The UN has also warned a humanitarian disaster is unfolding in Aleppo as 200,000 civilians are still trapped inside the rebel-held east of the city without food or medical supplies.
The boss of the foreign spy service also said Daesh now has “highly organised external attack planning structures”, and it uses them “as I speak” to “project violence against the UK without ever having to leave Syria”.
Together with MI5 and GCHQ, Mr Younger said MI6 has disrupted 12 major terrorist plots in Britain since June 2013.
And he said counter-terrorism police are still running “hundreds of investigations into those intent on carrying out or supporting terrorist atrocities against our citizens”.
‘C’ also warned that “hybrid warfare” fought online is becoming an “increasingly dangerous phenomenon”.
In a thinly-veiled reference to the Russian government, Mr Younger said hostile states were involved in “cyber-attacks, propaganda or subversion of democratic process”.
The Kremlin was accused of being behind a hack of the US Democratic party’s computer system in a bid to damage Hillary Clinton’s bid for the White House.
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