Troops stationed in Europe may face new restrictions on where they can wear their uniforms off base.

U.S. European Command has told the military services in Europe to consider imposing limits on where service members can wear their uniforms off base, a EUCOM spokesman told Military Times on Monday.

"We continually assess threats to our forces with and alongside our host-nation counterparts and take appropriate measures based on those assessments," Navy Capt. Greg Hicks said in a statement to Military Times. "We will not get into the specifics of those threats nor the assessments."

Hicks declined to say whether the move is connected to a Sept. 25 assessment from the Army Threat Integration Center that warned the Islamic State group has called on its followers to to track down service members in the U.S. and attack them.

Citing a Sept. 18 media report from Fox News, the ARTIC assessment warns that a jihadist had tweeted that his fellow fighters should, "Use the 'yellow pages,' social media sites like Facebook, Linkedin, and Twitter to find the addresses of service members, 'show up [at their homes] and slaughter them.'"

Under the EUCOM direction, commanders can limit where service members can wear their uniforms off base "based on local conditions," Hicks said.

"I won't comment on the why as it will get into our force protection assessments," he said in an email to Military Times.

Stars and Stripes first reported on Sunday about the possible changes to uniform rules.

Concerns about the safety of U.S. troops in Europe go back decades. During the Cold War, U.S. troops were targeted by leftists organizations, such as the Red Army Faction, which bombed U.S. military facilities in the 1970s and '80s. In December 1981, Army Brig. Gen. James Lee Dozier was kidnapped in Italy by the Red Brigades terrorist group and held for 42 days before being freed by Italian police.

In April 1986, a bomb exploded in a West Berlin disco, killing two soldiers and wounding 79 other service members. Former Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi was believed to be behind the attack. More recently, gunman Arid Uka killed two airmen and wounded two others at Franfurt International Airport in March 2011.

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