Head of MI5 says 9/11 events may be repeated

A total of 31 late-stage terror plots have been foiled in the UK in the past four years, the head of MI5 Ken McCallum said.

He also warned that the fall of Afghanistan to the Taliban was likely to have "emboldened" UK terrorists:

"There is no doubt that events in Afghanistan will have heartened and emboldened some of those extremists, and so being vigilant to precisely those kinds of risks is what my organization is focused on along with a range of other threats."

"Terrorist threats tend not to change overnight in the sense of directed plotting or training camps or infrastructure - the sorts of things that al-Qaeda enjoyed in Afghanistan at the time of 9/11.

"These things do inherently take time to build, and the 20-year effort to reduce the terrorist threat from Afghanistan has been largely successful," he noted.