Anti-terror raids in UK, 12 al-Qaeda suspects held

London: British police on Wednesday arrested 12 men in a series of anti-terrorist raids involving hundreds of officers across northwest England.

Greater Manchester Police said the suspects were detained under the Terrorism Act at eight addresses in the cities of Manchester and Liverpool and the surrounding area, about 200 miles (320 kilometres) northwest of London.

Police were searching several properties, including an Internet cafe, in the working-class Cheetham Hill area of Manchester, which has a large south Asian community.

Witnesses said another raid was at Liverpool's John Moores University.

Sky News broadcast the mobile phone video and still images of the university raid.

Police said the suspects ranged in age from a youth in his mid-teens to a 41-year-old man but would not give any details of the alleged plot.

The British Broadcasting Corporation reported that most of those arrested were Pakistani nationals but the Associated Press had no independent confirmation of this.

Home Secretary Jacqui Smith, the country's top law-and-order official, said she and the prime minister had been kept informed about the raids, but stressed that the decision to carry out the raids had been "an operational decision for the police and the security services".

Police would not confirm reports in British the media that the arrests were triggered after a senior officer inadvertently leaked details of a secret anti-terrorism operation.

Britain's top counterterrorism officer, Assistant Commissioner Bob Quick was photographed entering Prime Minister Gordon Brown's office on Wednesday morning holding a dossier on which details of an ongoing intelligence operation were visible.

The Metropolitan Police said Quick had apologised to the chief of the force for the lapse.

Smith on Wednesday refused to be comment on calls for the assistant commissioner's resignation, saying that "the focus is the ongoing operation".

The British government currently assesses the country's terror threat level as "severe", the second highest of five possible ratings.

It has been at that level or higher since suicide bombers with ties to Pakistan killed 52 commuters on London's bus and underground system on July 7, 2005.

Since then, two other major attempted attacks in Britain have failed.

Two weeks after the July 7 attacks, a group of men attempted a similar strike against the city's transport network - but their bombs failed to detonate.

In 2007, attempted car bombings in London's theatre district and at Glasgow airport also failed.

Intelligence and security officials say more than a dozen other attempted attacks have been thwarted since 2001.

They include an alleged 2006 plot to blow up trans-Atlantic jetliners in mid-air, for which eight men are on trial.