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LONDON — The leaking of thousands of British secret files by U.S. spy Edward Snowden has caused “enormous damage” and handed terrorists the “gift” of being able to attack Britain “at will,” says the new head of MI5.

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Andrew Parker, the director general of the Security Service, said exposing intelligence techniques had given fanatics the ability to evade the spy agencies. The Snowden files were published earlier this year by the Guardian newspaper.

Mr Parker used his first public speech since taking over at MI5 to issue a scathing attack on the Snowden leaks.

He warned that the U.K. was facing its gravest terrorism threat, including from “several thousand” Islamist extremists who are living here and want to attack the country.

It is feared within Whitehall that the leaked material has resulted in a “guidebook for terrorists” while there is frustration that Snowden has been hailed as a heroic whistleblower in some circles. Sources have said they find it incomprehensible that anyone could argue that exposing spy agency techniques for tracking terrorists is in the public interest.

Leaks from Snowden are known to contain at least 58,000 GCHQ files and it is feared there could be many more.