A north-east sniper who has waged war against Islamic State (IS) in their Iraqi heartlands has warned more attacks on Europe are “inevitable” as the terror group loses ground.
Moray man Alan Duncan, who has fought many tours over the past three years with the Kurdish Peshmerga, said that Western airstrikes and the long ground campaigns by various forces tackling the jihadis meant that the group was now “spent”.
But the former British army soldier said a new war would have to be waged against the Islamist ideology online, with increasing radicalisation at home as would-be supporters no longer physically travel to fight in Iraq and Syria.
At its height the group controlled vast swathes of the middle eastern countries including the massive city of Mosul – which the Iraqi army are now close to regaining.
And Mr Duncan last night praised the RAF drone strike which killed Aberdeen-born jihadi Abdul Rakib Amin in September 2015 – saying failure to act could have led to a massacre.
He said: “If that strike wasn’t done then he could have come back to Aberdeen and committed another London or Manchester.
“I’ve fought these people first hand, I have seen people run through minefields to escape ISIS, it is only because of the airstrikes that hundreds of thousands of people have been freed from their control.
“I have been warning people for two years that it was only a matter of time until they hit Britain and I’m afraid to say it’s only going to happen more because more are coming into Europe. It’s inevitable.
“ISIS warned Europe that they would smuggle in fighters with the refugees and that’s what they have done.
“They use our laws on freedom to hide behind and organise attacks like London and Manchester.
“We have to wise up because at the moment there are too many people blaming the government and security forces when they should be blaming ISIS.
“The security services have stopped many attacks but now they need new powers. If you haven’t done anything then you have nothing to fear as far as I’m concerned.
“We have not faced a threat like this since the Nazis, it’s a global problem and we have to use all we have to fight it.”