Terror watchdog: dissident Irish Republicans could mount first attacks in years on UK mainland

Watchdog warns over rogue Irish Republicans

LONDON — Britain’s terrorism laws watchdog says dissident Irish Republican paramilitaries could mount attacks on the U.K. mainland for the first time in about a decade.

Alex Carlile, the country’s independent reviewer of anti-terrorism laws, warned in an annual report of the threat following a surge in dissident Republican violence.

He said no one can “exclude the possibility of dissident paramilitaries mounting terrorist attacks in Great Britain.”

Britain’s domestic spy agency MI5 warned recently that it has more “threat to life” cases in Northern Ireland, due to a surge in paramilitary violence, than anywhere else in the U.K.

The last dissident Irish Republican Army attack was in 2001, when a car bomb in Birmingham, central England, failed to detonate.