We constantly review the threat of international terrorism to advise UK citizens travelling and living abroad.
Understand threat levels, learn how to minimise the risk, and what to do in a biological or chemical attack.
We have also have services to help keep UK businesses safe.
Our country travel advice pages have a terrorism section after the summary. We use four levels of terrorist threat:
A high threat from terrorism
A high level of known terrorist activity
A general threat from terrorism
Some level of known terrorist activity
An underlying threat from terrorism
A low level of known terrorist activity
A low threat from terrorism
No or limited known terrorist activity
We use several sources to constantly reassess the threat level:
Remember: we do not warn against travel to every country where there is a risk of terrorists operating.
You can take a number of common sense precautions to minimise the risk of being caught up in terrorism when you’re abroad:
Terrorist attacks include:
Chemical agents are natural or manufactured chemicals such as chlorine and mustard gas. Chemical agents are mostly liquids with poisonous vapours, but some are solids that can be released as a powder or aerosol.
Biological agents are germs which cause natural but rare diseases, such as smallpox or anthrax. They’re usually released from an aerosol.
This depends on the chemical or biological agent used. Symptoms can develop within seconds or over months.
Chemical attacks can cause breathing difficulties, eye and skin irritation, blisters, headaches, nausea and convulsions. The time it takes for symptoms to develop depends on the chemical and on its concentration, but unlike biological agents, chemical agents are not infectious.
The symptoms of biological agents vary with each disease. They are the same as when the diseases are caught naturally. Antibiotics can be used to treat most biological agent diseases. The sooner they are taken, the more effective they will be.
The fight against global terrorism is one of our key objectives.
British nationals should be aware that the long-standing policy of the UK Government is not to make substantive concessions to hostage takers, including ransom payments as the UK Government considers that this increases the risk of further hostage taking.
A ministerial statement (Word doc) on 2 June 2008 set out the financial assistance we may be able to offer in exceptional circumstances to British nationals affected by terrorist incidents overseas.