What is so frightening about Sunday’s devastating explosion is that MI5 clearly hadn’t the remotest inkling that it might happen.
It is certain that the fact that an attack of such potential catastrophic consequences wasn’t foiled was one of the central points in the Cobra meeting yesterday afternoon.
According to security agency sources, the bomber is not listed on any MI5 watchlists. A ‘bomb factory’ has been found that was linked to him. Four people were also arrested in connection to the terrorist act. This situation is extremely worrying.
What is so frightening about Sunday’s Liverpool bomb attack (pictured) is that MI5 clearly hadn’t the remotest inkling that it might happen
According to security agency sources, the bomber is not listed on any MI5 watchlists. A ‘bomb factory’ has been found that was linked to him
It was barely two months ago that the director general of MI5 Ken McCallum warned that the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan following the West’s miserable retreat from the country would provide a ‘morale boost to extremists already here or in other countries, so we need to be vigilant’.
His words have seemed to be tragically accurate since then. This was followed by the assassination inhumane of Sir David Amess, Conservative MP. Now, this is the attack on Liverpool.
Mr McCallum added at the time that the UK could expect more ‘low sophistication’ attacks – terrorists with kitchen knives.
And he later asserted that lockdown may have bred a new wave of ‘bedroom radicals’ – young men acting alone, and prepared to die if necessary, who are desperate to prove their worth in the fight against the western infidels.
His killer is currently being tried in the murder case against Sir David.
It is not yet clear if the Liverpool bomber was acting on his own.
It is impossible to deny the ambition and direct targeting of this plan at women and children, on the most important national day of the year.
If the bomber had managed to enter the hospital and the bomb hadn’t exploded, there are no potential negative consequences.
Initial reports suggested that the intended destina-tion of the bomber had actually been Liverpool’s Anglican Cathedral, where 1,200 military personnel, veterans and families of the fallen had gathered for the city’s Service of Remembrance.
This made sense given the timing – 10.59am on Remembrance Sunday, just before our often all-too divided country comes together to observe the 11am two minutes’ silence.
Death in taxi by suicide bomber after device explodes outside Liverpool hospital. Remembrance Sunday.
But the fact that the Women’s Hospital itself now appears to have been the target is a significant and terrifying development – the first suicide bomb attack on a hospital in this country.
Afghanistan is a good example. A Taliban affiliate Isis, Isis K attacked a Kabul military hospital last month and killed 19 civilians. Are we now feeling the catastrophic consequences here of this country’s withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan earlier this year?
Our security forces face enormous challenges in keeping us safe. We should all be thankful for their continued efforts. Since 2017, 31 plots to terrorize the late stages of society have been stopped.
Nonetheless, we’ve had two unexpected attacks in as many months.
The public has a right to expect MI5 and the counter-terrorist police to know if explosives of the strength that were detonated on Sunday are circulating somewhere and being manufactured in someone’s back room in an ordinary Liverpool home. The very existence of the bomb – and of the factory it presumably came from – is, I fear, a harbinger of worse to come, something that appears to be borne out by the raising of the threat level to severe yesterday afternoon.
We must not be submissive. We must show unrelenting strength in the aftermath of such atrocities.
To those who want to cause us pain, we must show them that they will not be tolerated in their murderous plots.
Anthony Glees (Centre for Security and Intelligence Studies, BUCSIS, University of Buckingham) is a security and Intelligence Expert.