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Spain has arrested 16 suspected extremists they say are linked to Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network and were preparing to launch chemical attacks.
The arrests come as Italian police searched the houses of three Muslims in northeastern Italy, following the discovery of explosives and maps, including one of London.
In pre-dawn raids on Friday, Spanish police swooped on 12 homes in the northeastern Catalonia region surrounding Barcelona, also discovering explosives, bomb components and radio transmission equipment used to communicate with Islamic extremists in Algeria and Chechnya, Spain's Interior Minister Angel Acebes said.
"They (police) have broken up a major terrorist network ... linked in this case to the Algerian Salafist group, a splinter of the Armed Islamic Group (GIA), which has clear connections with the criminal organisation of bin Laden," Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar told a news conference in the northern port city of La Coruna.
"The network had connections with terrorists recently arrested in France and the United Kingdom, and they were preparing attacks with explosives and chemical materials," he said. He did not say where the attacks were to have been.
The suspects belonged to two groups led by Algerians identified as Mohamed Tahraqui and Bard Eddin Ferdji, who were among those held, the Interior Ministry said in a statement.
The 16, mostly young Algerian men, were led from a Barcelona police station in handcuffs late on Friday afternoon and bundled into cars to be driven to Madrid for more questioning.
They were being held on suspicion of belonging to an armed group.
The searches in Spain on Friday turned up containers of suspicious resins, fuels and other chemicals that were being analysed, Acebes said, as well as electronic components, detonators and remote controls that could be used to make bombs.
Court sources said the suspects may be linked to a suspected al Qaeda explosives expert who was arrested in Paris last year with plans to blow up important French buildings.
Piedad Ruiz, 40, who owns a bakery in the working-class, suburban Barcelona block where several of the arrests were made, said she saw two police vans and 15 to 20 police in the street when she arrived for work early on Friday.
The suspects lived in the basement, she said. "They came to buy bread. They are normal, ordinary people. We never had problems with them," she told Reuters.
The swoop by some 180 Spanish police, on a request from French authorities, was the first major operation against suspected Islamic militants in Spain this year.
Acebes said Spain has arrested 35 suspects believed to have ties to al Qaeda since the September 11, 2001, airliner attacks on New York and Washington. Among them were eight men arrested in November 2001 suspected of having a role in the attacks.
In addition, police say lead hijacker Mohamed Atta travelled extensively in Spain in the summer before the commercial jets slammed into the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon.
Police say Atta held at least one meeting with conspirators in Salou, also in Catalonia in the northeast of Spain, home to a large contingent of north African and Arab immigrants.
EXPLOSIVES
Italian security forces contacted their British counterparts after finding a partial, unmarked map of the London underground and photocopies of passports of a few British Muslims, a senior Italian police source said.
"We are being very cautious about this case. The maps were not found in the same place as the explosives and I think it is going to be extremely hard to make a connection between the two," the source said.
Five Moroccans were taken into custody on Wednesday on suspicion of "terrorist activities" after police discovered a kilogram (2.2 lbs) of plastic explosives hidden in an abandoned farmhouse where the men were living temporarily, near the northern Italian city of Rovigo.
Police later raided an apartment used as a mosque in the nearby town of Badia Polesine. They found a number of Italian maps on which several sites were circled, including a street that leads to a major NATO installation in Verona.
The three Muslims whose houses were searched on Friday were all connected to the tiny Badia Polesine mosque. Police took away documents from their homes but the trio were not arrested.
Prosecutors have so far questioned just two of the five Moroccans in detention. Both men have denied any wrongdoing and said they knew nothing of the explosives.
The security source, who declined to be named, said the abandoned farmhouse was used occasionally by North African immigrants seeking shelter at night. Police raided the building as part of an investigation into illegal immigration and petty crime, he added.
More than 110 people have been arrested in Italy on suspicion of links to terror organisations following the September 11 attacks on the United States. Many of the suspects were later released for lack of evidence.
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Links: War against terrorism
Timeline: Major events since the Sept 11 attacks
Chemicals, explosives found as European police raid 'extremist' homes
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