Police records wiped

London: Hundreds of thousands of DNA records and other data on United Kingdom criminal suspects have been erased by accident, officials say.

Police Minister Kit Malthouse yesterday said ‘‘human error’’ led to hundreds of thousands of DNA records and other data about criminal suspects being erased from the country’s police computer.

Malthouse told MPs in the House of Commons that the mishap occurred during a ‘‘regular housekeeping process’’ on the computer, which holds 13 million records; 400,000 records were wiped.

‘‘Clearly this situation is very serious’’, Malthouse said, adding that ‘‘we will know the full extent of the impact of this issue over the next few days’’.