British police hunts for 'English brothers'

London, Dec 23 (UNI) The police has initiated a hunt for 'English brothers', a gang of British Muslims, who are planning terror attacks in the country after being trained by al-Qaeda for more than a year at a secret camp near the Afghan border.

The nine Britons, all believed to be in their twenties, were among a group of 12 Western recruits groomed by al-Qaeda to set up new terror cells here and in other Western capitals.

The police, however, do not know the real identities of the Britons, according to a report in The Times.

The 12 recruits include two Norwegians and an Australian who were smuggled into the Waziristan tribal region in Pakistan in October 2005.

They are believed to have been under the command of an al-Qaeda leader suspected of training some of the Britons accused of the alleged plot to blow up US-bound passenger planes.

The alert over the whereabouts of the 'English brothers' came as Sir Ian Blair, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, cautioned about ''an unparalleled and growing threat of attack''.

He said that the terrorist threat was ''far graver'' than any posed during the Second World War, the Cold War or IRA campaigns.

The police commissioner said he had no specific intelligence about an imminent attack but the threat was ''ever present''.

Intelligence sources in Pakistan said the men were reported to have joined Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters in Afghanistan and attacked NATO troops.

The ''brothers'' were given religious indocrination as well as lessons on how to assemble suicide bomb vests and improvised explosive devices, The Times report added.

The sources are reported to have been escorted to the al-Qaeda camp by Adam Gadahn, a Californian indicted by the US authorities as an al-Qaeda terrorist, who introduced the ''brothers'' to their tutors.

UNI XC KD MSJ VV1831