LONDON — Anti-terrorist police conducted raids in three British cities Tuesday and arrested 14 suspects, continuing a crackdown on suspected Islamic terrorists in a nation that has gone on high alert for the holiday season.
Police arrested four men in London, five men and a woman in Cambridge, and four men in the Birmingham area. All were held on suspicion of planning or instigating terrorist acts. Few details were disclosed, though the men in London and the Birmingham area were described as Britons of Pakistani descent in their 20s.
The arrests were part of an ongoing operation, said John Stevens, Britain's top police chief. "We are arresting people continuously. It is part of this massive effort we have been having since 11th September. And it will continue."
Security forces across Europe are on guard in a climate marked by violence in Iraq, inflamed anti-Western sentiments in the Muslim world, and increased activity by Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda network and its followers around the globe.
In recent weeks, Stevens and other top officials have warned about the threat of a terrorist attack here. Britain is a prominent target because of its alliance with the U.S. and its military presence in Iraq. The British Foreign Office issued a warning to British nationals in Saudi Arabia last week that expatriate housing complexes in Riyadh, the capital, were under "active surveillance" by terrorists.
The sense of menace escalated last month after twin suicide bombings at the British Consulate and HSBC bank headquarters in Istanbul, Turkey. Those attacks, blamed on bombers affiliated with Al Qaeda, were the first major strike by Islamic terrorists on British targets.
Last week, police made eight arrests around Britain that netted at least one potentially significant suspect: an Islamic studies student in Gloucester whom law enforcement officials have described as a suspected operative of Al Qaeda or one of its allied networks. British and French police are investigating whether Sajad Badat, a 24-year-old Briton of Pakistani origin, planned to attempt a suicide bombing and had contacts with Richard Reid, the British "shoe bomber" convicted in the United States of trying to blow up a Paris-Miami flight two years ago.
