5 plots on British soil identified so far in 2023 following 10 last year
Updated 17 February 2023
Arab News
London: Police in the UK say Iran is suspected of as many as 15 plots against dissidents on British soil since January 2022.
Metropolitan Police Assistant Commissioner Matt Jukes said five schemes by Iran to assassinate, kidnap or intimidate people in the UK had been stopped already in 2023.
Ken McCallum, director general of MI5, said in November that British intelligence had identified 10 such plots last year.
McCallum’s revelation came after armed police were stationed outside the offices of London-based Iran International, a Persian-language news organization critical of the regime in Tehran.
Two journalists at Iran International received “credible” threats against them, with McCallum saying Tehran’s intelligence agencies were “aggressive” toward dissidents in the UK.
Russia sends ‘hundreds’ of missiles, drones at Ukraine
Updated 7 sec ago
Russia pounded Ukraine with drones and ballistic missiles overnight on Thursday, targeting energy systems and injuring at least seven people in the capital Kyiv, and the cities of Dnipro and Odesa, officials said. “Hundreds of drones and ballistic missiles targeted energy systems, depriving people of power, heating, and water,” Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said in a post on X. Two people were hurt in a “massive” attack on Kyiv, which also hit various buildings, Mayor Vitali Klitschko said. Klitschko said on Telegram there had been hits on both residential and non-residential buildings on both sides of the Dnipro River bisecting the city. Fragments had fallen near two residential buildings in one district, but no fire had broken out. Reuters witnesses heard explosions resound in the city. Four people, including a baby boy and a four-year-old girl, were hurt in a missile and drone attack on the southeastern city of Dnipro and surrounding district, regional governor Oleksandr Ganzha said on Telegram. One person was hurt in a drone attack on the southern city of Odesa on the Black Sea, which also damaged an infrastructure facility and an apartment building where a fire broke out at an upper floor, head of the city’s military administration, Serhiy Lysak said. Lysak also said that a fire engulfed pavilions at one of the city’s markets and damaged a supermarket building. Regional Governor Oleh Kiper said that energy infrastructure was damaged in Odesa district. ’BLOW TO PEACE EFFORTS’ “Each such strike is a blow to peace efforts aimed at ending the war. Russia must be forced to take diplomacy seriously and de-escalate,” Sybiha said. Ukrainian officials have met Russian officials under US mediation in Abu Dhabi in the latest US push to end the war. But the talks so far have failed to resolve differences over Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region, sources say, and Russia has pressed on with attacks often focused on Ukrainian energy facilities in the depths of a harsh winter. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Wednesday the US needed to put more pressure on Russia if it wanted the war to end by summer.
