LONDON, June 2: Armed officers arrested two men following a large-scale anti-terrorist raid on a house in London in which police shot and injured one of the suspects.

The dawn swoop followed intelligence about a suspected plot on British soil, the Press Association news agency said.

London’s Metropolitan Police refused to comment on the report, but Peter Clarke, the head of the force’s anti-terrorist branch, said: “The intelligence was such that it demanded an intensive investigation and response.”

Highlighting its significance, Prime Minister Tony Blair, who is in Italy, was informed about the operation beforehand, a spokeswoman from his Downing Street office said.

Police said the operation had no link to the deadly bombings last July on the London transport network which left 56 people dead, including the four suicide bombers.

A large number of officials, 250 according to the BBC, stormed the house in the Forest Gate area, where police fired a single shot.

A neighbour said he saw a man wearing a bloodstained T-shirt being carried out of the property on Lansdown Road. He was reportedly shot in the shoulder.

The injured man, 23, whose wounds were not life-threatening, was taken to the Royal London Hospital, where he was later arrested on suspicion of being involved in plotting ‘acts of terrorism’, police said.

Angry at the shooting, about 20 Asian men gathered outside the hospital gate to protest.

A 21-year-old man said: “Going into someone’s house and shooting them in front of their mum, that’s not right, is it?

“Just because they have got a beard doesn’t mean to say you can shoot them.”

Another man, aged 23, told Press Association that the injured suspect was a ‘straightforward guy’ who worked for the Royal Mail postal service.

The second man arrested in the raid, aged 20, was being held at a high-security police station in central London. Reports said the two men were brothers.

More than 12 hours after the raid began, scores of officers in protective clothing were still at the scene, where a number of cordons were in place and roads closed. Tents and scaffolding were erected in front of the raided house.

An eight-kilometre air exclusion zone was in force overhead.

Mr Clarke said officials were conducting a thorough investigation to prove or disprove the ‘specific intelligence’ which prompted the raid.

“One part of it will be a painstaking search of the premises in Lansdown Road,” he said, underlining that this may take several days.

Anti-terror officers worked closely with other agencies, including the Security Service and the Health Protection Agency (HPA), to plan the swoop.

The HPA has responsibilities for public safety when hazards involving chemicals, poisons or radiation occur.

Sky News and BBC News said suspected bomb-making material was recovered from the property but it was not believed to have been in a volatile state.

Police refused to confirm the reports and said there was nothing to suggest that local residents were in any immediate danger.

Several other people who were in the house at the time were moved out but not arrested.

The area has a large number of Bangladeshi and Pakistani families who have lived there for some time and a recent influx of people from eastern Europe, said Salim Mala, 42, who runs a shop close to one of the police cordons.

The Independent Police Complaints Commission launched an investigation into the shooting of the 23-year-old man.

British police were heavily criticised for shooting dead an innocent Brazilian on a subway train in London last July as part of an anti-terrorist operation mounted in the aftermath of the London bombings.—AFP