ISLAMIC State jihadists have set up “special forces style” training camps in Europe as they plot mass casualty civilian strikes on the continent, Europol has revealed as it opens a new multinational intelligence hub.

The EU’s law enforcement agency has warned the terror group now have the means to carry out its threats, with extremists trained and armed and even educated on how to carry out atrocities in a detached unemotional way.

France remains high on their list of target nations.

Europol, headquartered in The Hague in The Netherlands, yesterday opened the European Counter Terrorism Centre (ECTC) to act as an intelligence hub from across Europol member states and Australia which signed a treaty to the group in 2007 specifically to share intelligence.

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Law enforcers across Europe already noted one of the great failures in preventing the attacks in Paris last November, that saw 130 people killed in multiple attacks across the French capital, was a lack of intelligence sharing. Some of the terrorists were known across the border in Belgium but not in France and some attackers fled from France back to Belgium unbeknown by authorities.

But an intelligence report by Europol said even with the centre now up and running mass casualty attacks in Europe was still likely on civilian “soft” targets.

“There is every reason to expect that IS, IS-inspired terrorists or another religiously-inspired terrorist group will undertake a terrorist attack somewhere in Europe again, but particularly in France, intended to cause mass casualties among the civilian population,” it concluded.

“This is in addition to the threat of lone actor attacks, which has not diminished.”

Published today: Changes in modus operandi of Islamic State terrorist attacks. Download pdf: https://t.co/uyKUdQ4JNF pic.twitter.com/UZ2flMBGi5 — Europol (@Europol) January 25, 2016

It said there was no “concrete” evidence to suggest terrorists were slipping back into Europe under the guise of refugees from Syria but said the refugees who were Sunni Muslim were vulnerable to be recruited by elements already in-country.

Those elements had already set up training camps in the EU, notably in the Balkans that had easy access to weapons left over from the wars in the 1990s.

“IS training of recruits consists of imported warfare techniques in the use of weapons, explosives and specific killing techniques, which include beheading,” intelligence has found. “Operatives are also trained in clandestine actions and counter-surveillance. The nature and structure of the training apparently enables IS operatives to execute terrorist acts in an emotionally detached manner, as demonstrated in the shootings in Paris. Acceptance of death is also seen as a facilitator for recruitment and for the execution of IS terrorist attacks.”