Five men arrested a week ago during a police and intelligence service operation across Britain have been charged with plotting bomb attacks and other terrorist offences, a Metropolitan Police spokesperson said on Friday.

Three of them were charged with offences involving 600kg of ammonium nitrate, which can be used for making explosives, and was discovered in a storage unit in Hanwell, West London, he said.

All the five will appear on Saturday at Belmarsh Magistrates' Court in southeast London, the police said.

They are Anthony Garcia (21) from Ilford, East London; Jawad Akbar (20), Omar Khyam (22) and Waheed Mahmoud (32), all from Crawley, West Sussex; and Nabeel Hussain (19) from Horley, Surrey.

Garcia, Akbar, Khyam and Mahmoud are accused of plotting with a 17-year-old youth, who cannot be named for legal reasons, and Mohammad Momin Khawaja to cause an explosion between October 1, 2003 and March 31, 2004. Khawaja  (29), a computer software expert, was arrested in Ottawa.