Armed officers arrested two men following a large-scale anti-terrorist raid on a house in east London in which police shot and injured one of the suspects. The dawn swoop followed intelligence about a suspected plot on British soil, the Press Association news agency said.
London's Metropolitan Police refused to comment on the report, but Peter Clarke, the head of the force's anti-terrorist branch, said: "The intelligence was such that it demanded an intensive investigation and response."
Highlighting its significance, British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who is in Italy, was informed about the operation beforehand, a spokeswoman from his Downing Street office said.
Police said the operation had no link to the deadly bombings last July on the London transport network which left 56 people dead, including the four suicide bombers.
A large number of officers, 250 according to the BBC, stormed the house in the Forest Gate area at 4:00 am (0300 GMT), where police fired a single shot.
A neighbour said he saw a man wearing a bloodstained T-shirt being carried out of the property on Lansdown Road. He was reportedly shot in the shoulder.
The injured man, 23, whose wounds were not life-threatening, was taken to the Royal London Hospital, where he was later arrested on suspicion of being involved in plotting "acts of terrorism", police said.
Angry at the shooting, about 20 Asian men gathered outside the hospital gate to protest. The second man arrested in the raid, aged 20, was being held at a high-security police station in central London. Reports said the two men were brothers.
More than 12 hours after the raid began, scores of officers in protective clothing were still at the scene, where a number of cordons were in place and roads closed. Tents and scaffolding were erected in front of the raided house. Clarke said officers were conducting a thorough investigation to prove or disprove the "specific intelligence" which prompted the raid.
Sky News and BBC News said suspected bomb-making material was recovered from the property but it was not believed to have been in a volatile state. Several other people who were in the house at the time were moved out but not arrested.
Comments
Comments are closed.