Islamic State terrorists have threatened to publish details of British military personnel after exposing a “hit-list” of American drone pilots and urging fanatics to “kill them wherever they are”.

The jihadi extremists circulated the names, home addresses and photographs of 76 United States Air Force personnel and claimed it had also stolen “secret intelligence” from Britain’s Ministry of Defence.

The claims, which could not be verified, encouraged Islamist terrorists to find and “behead” the Americans, in imitation of the tactic used on the streets of London in 2013 by the murderers of Drummer Lee Rigby.

The group, which calls itself the “Islamic State Hacking Division”, said in its online posting: “In our next leak we may even disclose secret intelligence the Islamic State has just received from a source the brothers in the UK have spent some time acquiring from the Ministry of Defence in London as we slowly and secretly infiltrate England and the USA online and off.”

Publishing photographs and purported home addresses of the American military personnel it said: “Kill them wherever they are, knock on their doors and behead them, stab them, shoot them in the face or bomb them.”

However, scrutiny of the information showed it did not appear to be the result of a leak or genuine hack, The Sunday Times said.

In a development which may offer military chiefs some reassurance over the safety of their IT systems, the 76 names appeared to have been gleaned from news articles and military newsletters before being matched with publicly-available data on the internet, such as telephone records.

Major Adrian Rankine-Galloway, a Pentagon spokesman, said: “We are aware that ISIL and other terrorist organisations have periodically purported to release personal information on US service members and military members of our coalition partners involved in operations against ISIL.

“We take proactive measures to protect our service members and their families and keep them apprised of changes to the security situation.

“We will not comment on the authenticity of the information in question, and this will have no effect on operations against ISIL.”

An MoD spokesman said: “We do not comment on alleged leaked documents.”

•Excerpted from a Sunday Telegraph report. Photo shows an ISIL terrorist.

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