"We know the overwhelming majority of the Muslim community are law-abiding," said Clarke

LONDON, March 30 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) – British police arrested Tuesday, March 30, eight British men and confiscated a staggering 500 kilograms of fertilizer that could be used to make explosives in a series of coordinated sweeps across the country.

The Britons, aged 17 to 32, are being held under the Terrorism Act 2000 for suspected involvement in planning a terrorist attack, said Peter Clarke, chief of the Metropolitan Police anti-terrorist branch.

From a 24-hour self-service warehouse in west London, police seized 500 kilograms of ammonium nitrate -- an easy-to-buy fertilizer which, when mixed with other chemicals, can be made into powerful bombs, reported Agence France-Presse (AFP).

Ammonium nitrate is a substance used by the Irish Republican Army (IRA) in the 1990s and, more recently, in the October 2002 bombings in Bali, Indonesia which killed 202 people.

Weapons expert Mike Yardley told AFP that 500 kilograms would be enough for an explosion on the scale of the Oklahoma City bombing in the U.S. in April 1995 which took 168 lives.

Around 700 officers were deployed in the raids, which Clarke said were "part of continuing and extensive enquiries by the police and the security service into alleged international terrorist activity."

Some of the 24 homes and businesses targeted in Tuesday's raids were in the vicinity of Heathrow, Gatwick and Luton airports.

Two suspects were arrested in Uxbridge, west London, three in Crawley, West Sussex, and one each in Ilford, east London, Slough, Berkshire, and Horley, Surrey, according to the BBC News Online.

Surrey police said the 18-year-old man arrested in Horley had been found at a Holiday Inn hotel near Gatwick Airport.

The suspects have been taken to two high security police stations in London for questioning.

Clarke said premises were still being searched by forensics teams.

"It must stress that the threat from terrorism is very real," he underlined. "The public must remain watchful and alert."

Clarke said the raids were not linked to the March 11 blasts in the Spanish capital Madrid which ripped through four commuter trains, killing 191 in the worst terrorist atrocity in Europe since the 1988 Lockerbie bombing.

But Spain's outgoing interior minister Angel Acebes, announced said that one of the suspects might have had a connection with the Madrid bombings.

London has been on guard against a potential attack since the Madrid bombings, with Metropolitan Police commissioner Sir John Stevens warning of the "inevitability" of a terrorist strike on the British capital.

The raids are by far the biggest and most important counter terrorist operation undertaken in recent years both by intelligence service MI5 and by Scotland Yard.

Little Known

Little was known about the ethnic background of the eight suspects, who under the Terrorism Act can be held for up to 72 hours without charge.

News reports said they were all of Pakistani origin, and that one had a job with a catering firm at Gatwick airport, Britain's second biggest airport.

The Doha-based Aljazeera television said the eight were Muslims.

Clarke did not confirm news reports that the arrested included "Islamic terrorist suspects", and the Metropolitan Police asked news media not to use that phrase.

But in his statement to reporters, Clarke went out of his way to say: "We know the overwhelming majority of the Muslim community are law-abiding and completely reject all forms of violence."

'Demonized'

Massoud Shadjareh, chairman of the Islamic Human Rights Commission, told the BBC that the Muslim community was being "demonized" as a result of such raids.

"These raids are usually given a lot of importance when they are taking place, but when people are released without charge, it is not news.

"It is creating a deception in the minds of ordinary people that we have a bigger problem than we really have," he said.

Muslims in Britain are complaining that they are maltreated by police stop-and-search operations under the Terrorism Act for no apparent reason other than being Muslim.