Britain's Special Air Service to double anti-terror forces

LONDON: Britain's elite Special Air Service (SAS) unit of the Army is doubling its anti-terror forces to tackle the growing terror threat to the country.

The unit will increase in size to 80 troops, 'The Sunday Times' quoted a source close to the elite regiment as saying.

The aim is to ensure security services have the manpower and skill to tackle co-ordinated attacks3 by gunmen and suicide bombers like those that left 130 dead in Paris in November 2015.

Police in London have an elite force of about 130 anti- terrorism officers trained by the SAS to fire weapons in "close quarters combat" and to drop from helicopters by rope.

While they are good, the source said, "they are not trained soldiers. They are not trained in close-quarters combat to the level that the SAS are".

The UK's Ministry of Defence declined to comment on security operations.