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ISIS extremists are reportedly planning to attack the UK after naming it as its next target following the vote to bomb Syria.

The Paris-style terror attacks would be launched by British-born jihadists travelling back from Syria, a Middle East security expert warned.

Paul Cruickshank, the terrorism analyst for American news channel CNN, said he had been told about the threat by a senior European counter-terrorism official.

Mr Cruickshank said the source told him: "There's intelligence that has been obtained by European security agencies that ISIS in Syria and Iraq is aiming to hit the United Kingdom next.

"The intelligence suggesting that British ISIS operatives in Syria and Iraq have been tasked to return to the United Kingdom to launch an attack against the UK.

"These concerns have been compounded by that vote yesterday in the British House of Commons authorising British airstrikes for the first time against ISIS in Syria."

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He added: "They are treating this very, very seriously indeed.

"Not clear how imminent this threat is."

Mr Cruickshank, who has reported extensively on al Qaeda, ISIS, and other Jihadi groups, said there was: "Real concern now about the threat to the United Kingdom" before adding "Concern in Europe, particularly in the UK now that what we saw in Paris, an attack like that, could play out again, perhaps in the United Kingdom, in the weeks ahead."

The threats comes as Aine Davis from Hammersmith was arrested in Turkey last month.

Davis, an associate of Jihadi John Mohammed Emwazi, was understood to have been carrying specific plans to carry out a terror attack in Europe given to him by IS hierarchy and the concerns have been compounded by British air strikes on Syria Wednesday night.

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(Image: Reuters)

Meanwhile, a radicalisation expert has warned the UK is under threat from home-grown jihadis who could carry out similar attacks as the Paris atrocities.

Suraj Lakhani, lecturer in criminology an sociology specialising in radicalisation and violent extremism at Sussex University, believes young British Muslims are being radicalised by British extremists.

Following the attacks in Paris on November 13 in which 130 people were slaughtered, the threat of terrorism is spreading from the war-torn Middle East to mainland Europe.

(Image: Getty)

Eighteen anti-terror arrests have been made in Belgium in the wake of the atrocities as well as 23 in Paris and one in Germany.

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MI5 still have the UK on a severe terror alert meaning an attack is highly likely and Dr Lakhani said: “There’s always going to be a fear and a risk that this radicalisation we are seeing is happening within the UK.

“We know that 750 to 1,000 British Muslims have gone to fight with ISIS and that some of them have come back.

“The reality is that there is a high terror alert and there is a threat it’s [Paris Attacks] something that could happen in the UK.”

Forty one people were killed in Beirut just hours before three gunmen swarmed the Bataclan theatre during an Eagles of Death Metal performance which left 89 dead, but bulletins were dominated by the tragedy in Paris.

Dr Lakhani dismissed claims ISIS were focusing on the west because mainstream media was not picking up on their terror attacks in the Middle East.

“I don’t think so,” he said.

“I think they have particular agendas against the countries they attack.

“A couple of hours before the Paris attack there was an attack in Beirut that barely got any coverage and one in Nigeria.

“But there have been specific threats made against France and they were carried out and there are promises of more attacks.”

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