'Mumbai-style' massacre plot foiled in Denmark

COPENHAGEN — Scandinavian intelligence agencies said they had foiled a "Mumbai-style" plot by Islamic extremists to massacre staff at a Danish newspaper that published caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed.Denmark's PET intelligence service said five suspects had been arrested, preventing an imminent assault on the Copenhagen offices of the Jyllands-Posten daily, where the attackers wanted to kill as many staff as possible.Four men were arrested in Denmark while a spokeswoman for Swedish intelligence agency Saepo said a fifth was arrested in Sweden in connection with the same international plot."It is our sense based on intelligence that this is a militant Islamic group with links to international terrorist networks," PET head Jakob Scharf told reporters.They were planning an attack "within the next few days", the agency said in a statement.The police had to evacuate a building where one of the suspects was arrested, after finding what may be explosives, media reported.Police acted after finding a suspicious object or explosives in the apartment of a 26-year-old Iraqi asylum seeker arrested there earlier in the day, the dailies Politiken and Jyllands Posten reported on their websites.The building, in the Greve suburb of Copenhagen, was evacuated around 9:00 pm (2000 GMT), said the reports.Local police refused to confirm the reports when contacted by AFP. Denmark's PET intelligence service could not be immediately reached for comment.In an email to Danish news agency Ritzau, Danish Justice Minister Lars Barfoed said the arrests prevented what could have been the most serious attack to ever occur in Denmark.Scharf told the news conference "the plan was to try to gain access to the location of Jyllands-Posten in Copenhagen and to try to carry out a Mumbai-style attack". The 2008 attacks in Mumbai saw 10 heavily armed gunmen storm three luxury hotels, the city's main railway station, a popular tourist restaurant and a Jewish centre. The attacks, centered around the luxury Taj Mahal Palace hotel, left 166 people

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