Extra police will be on duty in London tonight protecting high streets, transport hubs and other potentially vulnerable locations in response to heightened fears of a terror attack following the Islamist killings in Vienna and France.
Scotland Yard said that Londoners should not be “alarmed” by the increased police presence but urged people to report anything that “doesn’t feel right”.
The appeal comes in the wake of an increase in Britain’s official terror threat level, which was upped from “substantial” to “severe”.
That means an attack is deemed to be “highly likely” in a move that was prompted by Sunday night’s rampage in Vienna in which four people were killed and several more critically injured by Islamic State supporter Kujtim Fejzulai.
Police in Austria now believe that Fejzulai, who had been released early from a 22-month sentence for his failed attempt to travel to Syria to join IS, acted alone and not with an accomplice as originally feared.
Austria’s interior minister Karl Nehammer said that Fejzulai, who had joint Austrian and Macedonian citizenship, had been freed in December after convincing the authorities that he had abandoned his extremist views.
Fejzulai was shot dead by police soon after starting his attack, in which he used an automatic rifle to fire at people enjoying a night out in a district of central Vienna lined with bars and cafes. He was also carrying a pistol and a machete and wearing a fake suicide belt.
A total of 14 people have been arrested in Austria in connection with the attack during raids in Vienna, the town of St Pölten and the city of Linz.
Another two men, aged 18 and 24, have also been arrested in the Swiss city of Winterthur near Zurich.
Winterthur has been a previous focus of investigations into suspected extremists in Switzerland. In September, a man dubbed the “Emir of Winterthur” by Swiss media, was jailed for 50 months for recruiting for Islamic State.
