‘UK army troops to hit streets in case of terror attack’
British media reports say thousands of army soldiers may be deployed in the country’s streets in case of a major terrorist attack.
The secret plan for the deployment of over 5,000 armed soldiers was revealed when a secret document was mistakenly uploaded to a police chiefs' website, the Daily Mail reported.
The plan was contained in the minutes of a closed session of the National Police Chief Council’s (NPCC) held on 22 April in a hotel in Leicester.
Other media reports also say the plan would see an unprecedented military response to terrorism if groups such as ISIL were to carry out attacks in the UK.
Details of the so-called ‘Operation Temperer’ reveal how up to 5,100 troops could be deployed to support armed police in an emergency.
The operation would see troops guarding key targets alongside police while intelligence officers hunted those behind the attack.
Now John Rees with the ‘Stop the War Coalition’ believes that “it’s a disaster” to militarize the issue and put army forces on the streets.
This is while a fresh Guardian report says the British army is reluctant to deploy thousands of troops on to UK streets in the event of a terrorist attack on home soil.
Part of the argument against the idea is that the army, having been cut down from 102,000 to 82,000, is already overstretched and that if 5,000 troops were to be deployed to the streets, it would leave a significant hole in the number available for military duties, the report said.
But the biggest single objection is that once troops are committed to the streets, it is hard to pull them back. It would require the security services to declare that the threat level had dropped sufficiently to allow them to return to barracks, it added.
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