Britain's Jewish and Muslim communities are reacting with consternation, but not surprise, to a recent warning issued by UK police following the uncovering of a network of far-right extremists.
The Community Security Trust (CST), the organization charged with the security of the Jewish community in the UK, said that community was aware that neo-Nazis had increased their efforts to launch attacks in the past few years.
"CST has viewed with mounting concern the number of investigations, arrests and trials connected with neo-Nazi terrorists, and it is important that we do not allow the threat of pro-al-Qaida terrorism to deflect us from dealing with this additional problem," CST's communications director Mark Gardiner said. "These fanatics are seeking to spark a so-called race war and largely target the Muslim community - but we are all at risk, as shown by the recent shooting at Washington's Holocaust Museum."
His comments came in the wake of major law enforcement operations in the UK in recent weeks, during which counterterror police seized a large cache of arms - including rocket launchers, grenades and pipe bombs - the largest haul since the days of the IRA in the early 1990s, and questioned 32 people under the Terrorism Act.
An array of far-right paraphernalia, as well as a British National Party membership card, were also seized in operations which police made public this week.
The discovery raised fears of a right-wing attack against Muslim or Jewish targets, heightened by the discovery of an alleged plot involving the lethal poison ricin in which two men have been charged under the Terrorism Act. Both communities have been warned to be on the alert.
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