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Britain to Intensify Fight Against Arms Smuggling after Paris Attack


Britain's Prime Minister David Cameron takes to the stage to deliver a speech on the economy, in Nottingham, central England, Jan. 2, 2015.
Britain's Prime Minister David Cameron takes to the stage to deliver a speech on the economy, in Nottingham, central England, Jan. 2, 2015.

Britain will intensify efforts to stop cross-border arms smuggling after last week's deadly attacks by Islamist militants in Paris and update its security protocols to deal with such incidents, Prime Minister David Cameron's office said on Monday.

Cameron held a meeting on Monday morning to review the Paris attacks to assess the risks of something similar happening in Britain at which the police and other agencies agreed to update their training exercises for such incidents.

“They also discussed the risk posed by firearms, agreeing ... that we should step up our efforts with other countries to crackdown on the illegal smuggling of weapons across borders,” a spokesman for Cameron said.

The Paris attacks, in which journalists and policemen were among those killed, began with a shooting attack on the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo on Jan. 7, and ended with a hostage-taking at a kosher supermarket on Friday.

Britain raised its terrorism alert in August to the second-highest level, meaning an attack is “highly likely.”

The head of Britain's MI5 Security Service said last week that al-Qaida militants in Syria were plotting attacks to inflict mass casualties in the West.

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    Reuters

    Reuters is a news agency founded in 1851 and owned by the Thomson Reuters Corporation based in Toronto, Canada. One of the world's largest wire services, it provides financial news as well as international coverage in over 16 languages to more than 1000 newspapers and 750 broadcasters around the globe.

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