Terror threat

Why The United Kingdom Is A Top Terror Target

Monday night’s apparent suicide bombing, in which a suspected attacker detonated an explosion after an Ariana Grande concert in Manchester, was one of the U.K.’s deadliest terror attacks since a string of incidents shook London commuters in 2005.

The late Monday explosion killed at least 22 people, including children, and wounding at least 59 others. As of Tuesday afternoon, no organization claimed responsibility for the Manchester attack, though local police said that they were interrogating a British-born suspect.

The security service known as MI5, Britain’s national domestic intelligence agency, currently rates the threat from international terrorism as “severe” and the probability of an attack as “highly likely.” Additionally, all three British intelligence agencies, MI5, MI6 and GCHQ, are undergoing expansions in response to the rise in the radicalization of young people through terrorist websites, and as hundreds of battle-trained fighters who joined jihadist groups in Syria and Iraq return home to Britain and the European continent.