Australian police claimed to have foiled a major terror plot in Melbourne on Tuesday with the arrest of four persons linked to a Somali militant group who were allegedly planning a suicide shoot-out on a military base. Police officials said they have pinpointed an Australian terrorist cell supporting and directly involved in insurgency activity in Somalia.
In pre-dawn raids, some 400 officers from the Australian Federal Police, Victoria Police and New South Wales Police launched a series of raids in Melbourne under operation codenamed 'Operation Neath' and arrested four persons -- all
Australian citizens. Some plotters were of Somali descent, others Lebanese.
Police said the arrested persons were being questioned and several others are assisting with inquiries. The raids followed a seven-month surveillance against the plotters, who are allegedly linked to al-Shabaab, a Somali Islamic extremist group, Australian Federal Police Acting Commissioner Tony Negus told media-persons.
A NSW police spokesperson said 20 officers from the Counter Terrorism and Special Tactics Command helped in the
Melbourne phase of the investigation over a number of months. "Details of the planning indicate the alleged offenders were prepared to complete a sustained attack on military personnel until they themselves were killed," a federal police spokesman said. No raids or arrests were made in NSW, the spokesman said.
"The men were planning to carry out a suicide terrorist attack on a defence establishment within Australia involving an armed assault with automatic weapons," the official said. The investigation revealed some of the alleged plotters had travelled to Somalia to join fighting there, he said. The group had been "actively seeking a fatwa, or religious ruling, to justify its plan for a terrorist act in Australia," Negus said.
Victoria Police Chief Commissioner Simon Overland said search warrants issued across Melbourne and at Colac in the
state's south-west may take 24 hours to complete. Overland said police had been anxious