UK cancels 'Burhan Wani Day' rally in Birmingham City after India protests

UK cancels 'Burhan Wani Day' rally in Birmingham City after India protests [Wani was killed in an encounter with Indian security forces in Jammu and Kashmir on July 8, 2016]

The Birmingham City Council has been forced to withdraw permission granted to the organisers of a rally titled "Burhan WaniDay" to mark the first death anniversary of Hizb-ulMujahideen militant/terrorist Burhan Wani here after India lodged a strong protest over the same.

Current Affairs: Burhan Wani was killed in an encounter with Indian security forces in the Tral region of Jammu and Kashmir on July 8, 2016.

The United Kingdom has a long memory of terror attacks. For more than 30 years from the early 1970s, the Irish Republican Army (IRA), a paramilitary group, carried out multiple attacks across the UK. The deadliest were the Birmingham pub bombings of 1974, when 21 were killed. In 1996, the IRA detonated a massive 1500-kilogram (3300-pound) bomb in a Manchester shopping center that injured more than 200 and was not far from this year's terror attack in the Manchester Arena that claimed the lives of 23 adults and children and left 250 injured, 59 of whom were taken to hospital. Twenty three of these 59 had to be classified as critically injured.

For more than a decade, Islamist terrorism has overtaken Irish Republicanism as the key threat for British security services. On July 7 2005, a cell of four British Muslim suicide bombers inspired by al Qaeda detonated devices on the London transit network, killing 52.

Since 2005, successive British governments have warned the public to be on alert for terror attacks, elevating the threat level to "severe", the second highest alert.

The UK's MI5 has thwarted dozens of terrorist plots, mainly involving British-born would-be attackers, the latest of which took place on March 22, 2017 in the vicinity of the Palace of Westminster in London, seat of the British Parliament. Read Full Story >>>