Britain faces its highest threat of terrorism since the 1970s, when the Irish Republican Army planned a series of bomb attacks, a legal official said on Sunday.

The threat to British cities from Islamic State-inspired attacks is an ‘enormous ongoing risk,’ Max Hill, the new independent reviewer of terrorism laws, told the Sunday Telegraph.

Hill said it ‘would be wrong to draw a simple comparison’ between the ideology and organization of Islamic State and the IRA, which used violence to further its aim of forcing Britain out of Northern Ireland.

‘But in terms of the threat that's represented, I think the intensity and the potential frequency of serious plot planning - with a view to indiscriminate attacks on innocent civilians of whatever race or colour in metropolitan areas - represents an enormous on-going risk that none of us can ignore,’ he told the newspaper.

 ‘So I think that there is undoubtedly significant ongoing risk which is at least as great as the threat to London in the '70s when the IRA were active on the [British] mainland.’  Britain has kept its terrorist threat level at ‘severe’ - the second-highest level - for the last two years, meaning an attack is highly likely.

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