Terror plot raid: four held as bomb squad called in

ARMED police have swooped on a number of properties in an operation to foil a suspected Christmas terror plot.

An Army bomb squad was deployed following a raid in Chesterfield and officers also conducted early morning operations in three parts of Sheffield.

Counter-terror police said three men, aged 22, 36 and 41, were detained at different addresses in Sheffield, and a 31-year-old was held in Chesterfield.

An area of the north Derbyshire town was sealed off for much of yesterday as the bomb disposal team worked with large numbers of police behind a cordon.

In the Meersbrook area of Sheffield, residents said they were woken by police blowing open the door of a run-down terraced house as their street was swamped by heavily armed officers in protective gear.

A few miles further north, in the Burngreave area, a mosque and community centre was sealed off with local people telling similar stories of being woken at 6am by a series of loud bangs and camouflaged officers with guns.

Two other raids are understood to have happened at a flat a short distance from the centre in Burngreave and a property in the town of Stocksbridge, just north of Sheffield.

The operation was mounted as police and MI5 tackle a terror threat seen as unprecedented.

In addition to five attacks in London and Manchester, Home Secretary Amber Rudd revealed earlier this month that security agencies have foiled nine plots since the Westminster atrocity in March.

Counter-terror teams are running about 500 live investigations involving 3,000 individuals at any one time, while there is also a wider pool of 20,000 subjects of previous probes.

In Chesterfield, Simon Fox, 22, of Shaw Street, said: “We have seen Army, police from all over, we have seen a couple of packages being removed by the bomb disposal unit. You just don’t expect this to happen in such a small town.”

One person said the police arrived in the street at 4.30am.

A woman, who did not wish to be named and lives opposite the property that was raided on Kings Road North, said: “I was watching telly and saw police knocking on a neighbour’s door.

“The next minute they were banging on my door and shouted, ‘you have 10 minutes to get out, we’re evacuating’. I was really panicking.

“It’s a Syrian family who lives there, they didn’t speak much.”