Secret ISIS terror unit is training British fanatics in Syria to carry out bloody Paris and Brussels-style attacks on our streets
A SECRET unit behind the Paris and Brussels atrocities is training ISIS jihadis to launch murderous attacks in Britain, a member of the terror group has claimed.
The ISIS fighter said European fanatics are put through a gruelling seven-month training camp before being smuggled out of Syria on a deadly mission to bring carnage to the West.
Would-be suicide bombers are coached in bomb making, put through harsh physical endurance tests and drilled in fanatical ideology as they prepare to blow themselves up.
The captured jihadi said: “It takes seven months to be trained in al-Kharsa brigade. It is very hard.
“If 20 start the training, only five finish it. Then after that they go back to Europe and attack.”
And British and European jihadis who cannot travel to Syria are given online instruction by the ISIS "external operations unit" in how to carry out mass casualty atrocities, he said.
One such attack by a "sleeper cell" in Britain is said to have been foiled before the terrorists could put their plan into action.
The captured jihadi's account appears to tally with US and British intelligence reports that an ISIS external operations unit was behind the linked Paris and Brussels attacks that killed more than 160 people.
MOST READ IN WORLD NEWS
Belgian-born Abdelhamid Abaaoud is thought to travelled a number of times between Syria and his home country.
He was a handler in the ISIS external attack planning agency, according to interrogation transcripts from European intelligence agencies.
Other members of the Paris terror cell and Brussels bomber Najim Laachraoui appear to have received training from the same division in Syria.
Now the ISIS prisoner - who was in front of his Kurdish captors - has for the first time revealed the name of the Syrian training unit, the al-Kharsa brigade.
He said: “The attacks that happened in Paris and Brussels, the attackers were trained by them and left from Syria to Europe. “Sometimes there are foreigners who come to Syria and have training for specific missions. Then they do the attacks alone.
“Others are sleeper cells in Europe who want to join Daesh here, but can’t. They stay in their countries and contact (ISIS). Then they talk, and when they are ready they do the bombings.”
He claimed the unit was still operational and using a smuggling route via Turkey as recently as February, despite huge losses of territory to Kurdish and Syrian government forces.
The European fighter told how he married a Syrian woman when he arrived two and a half years ago, and has close knowledge of al-Kharsa through his brother-in-law, a high-level ISIS commander.
He estimated 50 fanatics from countries including Germany, France, Belgium and Britain had completed the special training program.
He said: “They will make more suicide attacks in Europe because the coalition is bombing them a lot. They also want to carry out attacks in Lebanon.”
Last week we told how a sinister list of 173 fanatics poised to strike in Europe had been found in a former ISIS stronghold in Mosul, Iraq.
We pay for your stories! Do you have a story for The Sun Online news team? Email us at [email protected] or call 0207 782 4368 . We pay for videos too. Click here to upload yours.