Anti-terror raids target Islamists in Europe

Abderrazak Mahdjoub, 29, was held at the request of Italian authorities investigating an alleged network involved in recruiting Islamists to carry out suicide attacks in Iraq.

A copy of an arrest warrant, obtained by Reuters, showed that one of the recruits was suspected of complicity in an October rocket attack on a Baghdad hotel where US Deputy Defence Secretary Paul Wolfowitz was staying.

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Separately, British police were questioning a suspected would-be suicide bomber arrested in southwest England on Thursday. The government has said the 24-year-old Muslim man may have links with al-Qaeda.

The European police operations coincided with the charging of three Kenyans in connection with a previously undisclosed plot to blow up the US embassy in Nairobi -- the same mission that was destroyed by suspected al-Qaeda bombers in 1998.

While described as breakthroughs, the developments highlighted the fact that Islamic radicals and al-Qaeda sympathisers, suspected of carrying out deadly suicide attacks in Saudi Arabia and Turkey this month, apparently remain active across a wide variety of other fronts.

In the latest alert, the NATO-led peacekeeping force in Kosovo said on Friday it had stepped up security in response to a "specific threat" against international organisations in the UN-run province.

Two years into the US-led war on terror, some European security officials are expressing concern that Islamic militants may be drawing new strength from Muslim anger over the US-led war in Iraq.

German foreign intelligence chief August Hanning last week described Iraq as a potential "crystallizing point" for the radical Islamist cause and said small numbers of activists had been heading there from several European countries with the aim of fighting the US occupation.

Germany has been especially vigilant for signs of extremism in its 3.2 million-strong Muslim population since the September 11 attacks on the United States. Three of the 19 suicide hijackers had lived and studied for years in Hamburg.