LONDON – British police on Monday arrested a dozen men suspected of plotting a large-scale terror attack – the biggest anti-terrorist sweep since April 2009, when 12 men were detained over an alleged al-Qaida bomb plot in the northern city of Manchester.
Police who swooped in on the men’s houses early in the morning were unarmed, suggesting any planned attack was not imminent.
The men were arrested in London, the Welsh city of Cardiff and the English cities of Birmingham and Stoke-on-Trent.
The plot was directed at targets inside the United Kingdom but counterterrorism officials declined to give more details.
“The operation is in its early stages so we are unable to go into detail at this time,” said John Yates, Britain’s senior counterterrorism police officer.