News, views and top stories in your inbox. Don't miss our must-read newsletter Sign up Thank you for subscribing We have more newsletters Show me See our privacy notice Invalid Email

The head of MI5 has revealed 12 terror attacks in the UK have been foiled since June 2013.

Andrew Parker, director general of the MI5 domestic intelligence agency said ISIS posed the biggest current threat to national security.

He claimed Britain's intelligence agencies have foiled a terror plot around once every two months over the past two-and-a-half years.

He said: "Today the most visible threat is from terrorism and in particular that posed by Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant - ISIL - or Daesh in Syria.

"Together with MI6 (the foreign intelligence service), GCHQ (the security agency), and the police, MI5 has disrupted 12 plots in the UK since June 2013."

(Image: Getty)

It comes amid warnings from senior police officers that weapons, like the ones used in the Paris massacres, are being smuggled into Britain by criminals gangs and sold on to terrorists, senior police officers warned today.

National Crime Agency and Met Police bosses say they have seen a rise in deactivated guns being reactivated in Eastern Europe and coming into Britain by sea, air and even by post.

Some illegal weapons are also bought on the Dark Web or from licensed owners that have either sold or had their weapons stolen.

Met Assistant Commissioner for specialist operations including terrorism, Mark Rowley, said: "The link we see between terrorism and criminals is in the local communities which they come from, often involved in low level organised crime activity.

"We have got those who are vulnerable people who just get hooked on an ideology.

(Image: Daily Mirror)

"There are those who fully subscribe and are determined to act for Daesh, others are just angry and are criminals and are given a way to express that through the streets or in prison.

"It's a complex picture, it is more at a low level, there is not incentive for the highest criminal to get involved in this.

"This rise in gun activity isn't country wide, the biggest rise is seen by our metropolitan forces. It suggests escalation of the use of weapons between gangs to compete with each other."