FEARS are growing that depraved Islamic State (ISIS) militants could obtain a nuclear weapon from Pakistan.
The group is understood to be preparing a new push to seize territory in the province of Balochistan, which borders Afghanistan and Iran.
The area is widely-known to be the centre of Pakistan's nuclear weapons programme, with controversial underground testing of atomic explosive devices in the 1990s.
And Middle East terror experts are now warning that the extremist group could be close to obtaining a 'dirty' bomb.
Afzal Ashraf, a former senior officer in the RAF, said Pakistan was "the most likely place" for ISIS to obtain a nuclear explosive.
He argued that the organisation, which has declared a 'caliphate' in Iraq and Syria after gaining vast swathes of territory, was now enjoying "success in getting support" in a region at the heart of Pakistan's nuclear programme.
In 1998, Pakistan exploded five underground nuclear devices in mountains in the Balochistan region as part of an arms race with neighbouring India.
The country remains outside both the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons and the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty.
Its growing nuclear arsenal raises the risk that the deadly weapons or the ingredients used to construct them - enriched uranium or plutonium - could fall into the hands of ISIS.
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Dr Ashraf, who worked as a counterterrorism strategist for the US army in Iraq, told the Express: "Balochistan is a province where the Pakistanis do their nuclear tests, and presumably have some of their nuclear facilities, and maybe even some of their nuclear weapons.
"It may be a coincidence but their expansion into that particular part of Pakistan is worrying."
It follows comments by the Australian foreign minister that ISIS has already obtained enough radioactive material to produce a dirty bomb.
Julie Bishop raised fears the savage group, which releases almost daily videos of public headings, could be working towards manufacturing a nuclear device.
ISIS is "prepared to use any and all means, any and all forms of violence they can think of, to advance their demented cause", she said.
Pakistan is known to have around 120 warheads, with a missile range of 2,750km (1,700miles), making it capable of striking targets in India, Russia and the Middle East.
In March, the country successfully tested new ballistic missiles capable of carrying a nuclear bomb.
Were a bomb to obtained by ISIS, it could have the potential to reach the eastern edge of Europe, including Turkey.
However, Dr Natasha Underhill, an expert on terrorism in the Middle East at Nottingham Trent University, said the risk of ISIS obtaining nuclear weapons from the central Asian remained "low" for the time being.
Nuclear weapons require careful storage and Dr Underhill said the group would not be able to adequately house a bomb, nor know how to use it.
She told Express.co.uk: "Terrorism is about fear and the promotion of fear and for now the use of suicide bombers, beheadings and graphic public displays of brutality suit how the organisation wants to portray itself - as a leader of the new caliphate and one that has strict adherence to Islamic law."
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