UK 'stopped seven terror attacks in last six months'

British security services have foiled around seven terror attacks since June with fighters returning from Syria posing a growing threat, Prime Minister David Cameron said on Monday.

"Our security and intelligence services have stopped something like seven attacks in the last six months, albeit attacks planned on a smaller scale" than Friday's attacks in Paris, he told BBC Radio 4 from Turkey.

"We have been aware of these cells operating in Syria that are radicalising people in our own countries, potentially sending people back to carry out attacks," he added.

Security services have spent a "long time" working out how to deal with multiple coordinated attacks on the street, but will have to go "right back to the drawing board" after the Paris attacks, which killed at least 129 people.

"It was the sort of thing we were warned about," said the prime minister.

Cameron added there were "hopeful signs" from talks on Syria in Vienna Saturday that progress was being made on how to deal with the Islamic State (IS) militants, and that he was to speak with Russian President Vladimir Putin later Monday. 

"You can't deal with so-called Islamic State unless you get a political settlement in Syria that enables you then to permanently degrade and destroy that organisation," he said.

However, he repeated that any settlement must include the removal of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, who is backed by Russia and Iran.

Cameron said he still needed to convince more British MPs to support military strikes against IS targets in Syria.

"I have always said I think that it is sensible that we should. ISIL [IS] don't recognise a border between Iraq and Syria and neither should we, but I need to build the argument, I need to take it to parliament, I need to convince more people," Cameron said.

"We won’t hold that vote unless we can see that parliament would endorse action because to fail on this would be damaging. It is not a question of damaging the government, it is a question of not damaging our country and its reputation in the world," he added.

The British government, which is already involved in bombing IS targets in Iraq, lost a parliamentary vote in 2013 to extend military action to Syria.

However, Cameron added that he would take immediate action if UK interests were at stake, citing drone attacks which had killed British militants in August.

Britain to hire 1,900 more spies

Britain is to recruit an extra 1,900 security and intelligence staff to counter the threat of terrorist violence following the Paris attacks, British media reported on Monday.

It would be "the biggest increase in British security spending since the 7/7 bombings in London" that killed dozens in 2005. The measures were to be announced by Cameron later on Monday, according to the Guardian.

"I am determined to prioritise the resources we need to combat the terrorist threat because protecting the British people is my number one duty as prime minister," Cameron will say, according to the newspaper.

He later told the BBC that terrorism was "the struggle of our generation". 

"This disease is a challenge we are going to have to face with everything we have got," he said. "We will do everything we can to make sure we keep our people safe, but we live in a very, very dangerous world."

The recruitment would increase the staff of intelligence agencies MI5, MI6 and GCHQ (the Government Communications Headquarters) by some 15 percent, according to the Guardian and the Financial Times.

In addition, extra aviation security officers would assess airports around the world, in response to the crash of a Russian plane in Egypt last month that the British government suspects may have been downed by a bomb.

Turkey warned France over Paris attacker

Meanwhile, Turkey said it had warned France almost a year ago over an IS militant who blew himself up in the bloody Paris attacks but the French authorities did not respond.

Turkish police "notified their French counterparts twice - in December 2014 and June 2015" about Omar Ismail Mostefai, a senior Turkish official told AFP on Monday, asking not to be named.

"We did, however, not hear back from France on the matter," added the official.

Identified by his finger, which was found among the rubble of the Bataclan concert hall, the 29-year-old Mostefai was one of three attackers, all wearing suicide vests, at the venue where 89 people were killed in the bloodiest scene of the carnage.

Born on 21 November, 1985, in the poor Paris suburb of Courcouronnes, Mostefai  had a criminal record that shows eight convictions for petty crimes between 2004 and 2010, but no jail time.

The Turkish official confirmed that Mostefai entered Turkey via the northwestern province of Edirne, which borders EU members Greece and Bulgaria, in 2013.

"There is no record of him leaving the country," said the Turkish official.

The official said that French authorities had only showed interest in Mostefai after the attacks.

"It was only after the Paris attacks that the Turkish authorities received an information request about Omar Ismail Mostefai from France."

He said that on 10 October, 2014, Turkey received an information request regarding four terror suspects from the French authorities, but not for Mostefai, even though he had been identified by Turkey as a potential terror suspect.

The Turkish authorities foiled a plot to stage a "major" attack in Istanbul on the same day as the deadly gun and suicide attacks in Paris, a senior official said Sunday.

"We believe they were planning an attack in Istanbul on the same day as the Paris attacks" on Friday, the official said on condition of anonymity.

"The initial investigation shows we foiled a major attack."

Turkey arrested five suspected IS militants ahead of a summit of G20 leaders gathering in Turkey's southern resort of Antalya on Sunday and Monday.