ISIS fighters in contact with UK terror cells, UK minister

Islamic State fighters are in communication with the UK-based terrorist cells with the aim of carrying out terror attacks in Britian and Europe, Britain's defence minister Gavin Williamson has said.

Williamson, who in the northern Afghanistan's Mazeer-i-Shareef city to visit British troops, said the UK must act to prevent another Manchester-style attack - in reference to the ISIS-inspired suicide bombing at an Ariana Grande concert in May last year which claimed 23 lives.

"What we see is a real threat posed by these groups to the UK and we've got to be acting as we are to ensure that we do not see future Manchester-style attacks," he said.

"We consistently see terrorist groups operating here in Afghanistan, [and] evidence of their links back not just to the United Kingdom but to the whole of continental Europe," Williamson told 'Sky News'.

In recent months there have been "countless times when there have been links back to the UK from terrorists in Afghanistan," he said over the weekend.

The minister said that additional troops were sent to Afghanistan last month to combat the growing terrorist threat posed to Britain as well as to Afghan civilians.

Islamist militants pushed out of Iraq and Syria were regrouping in Afghanistan, he warned.

The focus of the US and British special forces in Afghanistan is now believed to be on a group known as IS-Khorasan or IS-K, which is seen as a rival to the Taliban and al-Qaeda.

Its latest leader Abu Saad Erhabi was killed in a US airstrike a week ago - the fourth ISIS leader to be killed in the country in the past few years.

Williamson hinted that a small number of British foreign fighters may have joined ISIS in Afghanistan, saying that "a similar spread of foreign fighters" who travelled to Iraq and Syria had appeared in Afghanistan.

The extra 440 British troops in Afghanistan follows a request from the US, bringing the total number of British personnel in the country to 1,100, the third-largest behind the United States and Germany.