Remains of the nail bomb that Pavlo Lapshyn planted outside the Kanz-ul-Iman Central Jamia Mosque in Tipton

The terrorist threat from extreme right-wing “lone wolves” is on the increase and growing in potency, one of the Government’s most senior security officials warned yesterday.

Individual terrorists driven by hatred of immigrants and Muslims are assessed as being more skilled in making and using explosives, firearms and poisons while also being harder to track than Islamist terrorist cells.

Police and intelligence services stepped up monitoring of the far-right threat after Anders Breivik’s massacre in Norway in 2011 and have reviewed measures again this year after the murder of an elderly Muslim man and bomb attacks on mosques in the West Midlands.

Pavlo Lapshyn, 25, had been in Britain for only five days before he murdered Mohammed Saleem, 82, in Birmingham in April and embarked on his bombing campaign. He pleaded guilty at the Old Bailey yesterday and will be sentenced on Friday.

Lapshyn’s ability to act alone and the speed at which he began his self-styled mission “to increase racial conflict” after arriving in Birmingham on a work placement has alarmed police and security agencies.

“The extreme right-wing terrorist threat is a threat of lone actors – but lone actor threats are often more challenging because groups often have weaknesses, whereas determined lone actors rarely do,” Charles Farr, director-general of the Office for Security and Counter-terrorism, said. “They are lone actors but often more proficient than actors who we may see at the other end of the terrorist spectrum.”

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