LONDON — In the latest of several European terrorism alerts, the British police arrested 12 men before dawn on Monday in raids in three cities under counter-terrorism laws — the biggest operation of its kind for months, The New York Times reports.

The action, designed “to ensure public safety,” as the police put it, followed a suicide bombing in Sweden earlier this month and alarms in Germany over the reported threat of a terror attack modeled on the onslaught by gunmen in Mumbai.

But a Scotland Yard spokesman, speaking in return for anonymity under police rules, said the arrests were not linked to an unfolding terrorism investigation in Luton, just north of London, where Taimour Abdulwahab Al-Abdaly, a 28-year-old Swedish-Iraqi man who killed himself and wounded two others when he detonated two bombs in Stockholm on Dec. 11, is said to have lived and studied. The spokesman said that no arrests have been made in Mr. Abdaly’s case, and that the enquiry continues.

The BBC said the 12 men arrested on Monday were involved in a plot to bomb unspecified targets in Britain, inspired by Al Qaeda. Some of the suspects were said to have Bangladeshi origins. John Yates, Britain’s ranking counter-terrorism police officer, said the detained men were from London, the Welsh city of Cardiff and Stoke-on-Trent in the English Midlands.


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