Al-Qaeda grooming Muslims for Mumbai-style attack in UK

Young British Muslims are being groomed by Al-Qaida for a Mumbai-style attack on targets in Britain, the country's spy agency has warned. Britain's internal intelligence agency MI5 has warned that a new generation of British extremists is being radicalised by Middle East-based Anwar al-Awlaki, who recruited the Detroit plane bomber. They are concerned that Awlaki's followers could unleash a wave of easily planned guerrilla-style terrorist attacks similar to the massacre in Mumbai.

Such small-scale attacks could be carried out cheaply by individuals with little terrorist training and without the need for the support of a large organisation, it said. According to the report, al-Awlaki caught the headlines with one of his statements in March, in which he said, "Isn't it ironic that the two capitals of the war against Islam, Washington DC and London, have also become among the centres of Western Jihad (holy war). Jihad is becoming as American as apple pie and as British as afternoon tea."